


Kiss, Fake it Better

by squirenonny



Series: Voltron: Duality [9]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: AU, AU prior to season 3, Angst, Angst and Fluff, Canonical Character Death, Dualityverse Fic, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I don't even want to think about how non-canon this is going to be after s3 drops, Kidfic, Smol Lance, Spoilers for Dualityverse, fic technically stands alone I guess but it's better read in order, seriously we're so deep in this au, so AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-28
Updated: 2017-09-07
Packaged: 2018-12-07 21:56:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 24,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11632725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squirenonny/pseuds/squirenonny
Summary: Altea is gone. Everyone she's ever known, dead. Her bond with Blue, broken. But Meri still has a job to do, and she can't give up until she sees the next blue paladin raised to his rightful place on Team Voltron.She's not okay with everything that's happened. But she can pretend.





	1. Down Came a Blackbird

**Author's Note:**

> I said it in the tags, but I'll say it again here: This fic is part of the _Voltron: Duality_ series, and while it basically stands alone (being a prequel and all) it's best read in order. If you don't care about spoilers, then at least start with _One Week to Say Goodbye_ , which introduces the previous paladins. This fic is set immediately after that one.
> 
> There's no set update schedule for this fic, since my attention is split among several projects at the moment, but it should be fairly quick. Probably twice a week.
> 
> Character death warning in the tags is primarily for chapter 1, which deals with the fall of Altea. Nothing is shown directly, except for some dead/dying unnamed characters glimpsed at a distance, but this is Meri's home, after all.

Altea was already burning by the time Meri arrived. Behind her, Alfor sucked in a sharp breath, his hands gripping the backrest so hard Meri thought it might break.

“We’re too late,” she whispered, grief and terror whirling in her head. Blue echoed the sentiment, her voice faint. Their rushed bond was inconsistent, Blue's voice sometimes a roar inside Meri's head, so loud it blotted out the rest of the world. Sometimes, though, she could barely hear Blue at all. Meri thought Blue's anguish now might have equaled the pain they'd shared that first day, when Lealle’s loss beat down on them both like a crashing wave, and a selfish part of her was glad this time was less intense. “Zarkon’s already here.”

“There is still time.” Alfor leaned forward, his cape brushing Meri’s knee as he extended his arm past her to point toward the gleaming white lines of the capital. “Hurry. Take me to the castle.”

Meri nodded, banishing her fear. The Galra fleet closing in around the planet was slow to notice her, and Blue was much too fast to be caught. Lasers nipped their heels, a lucky one rattling the cockpit, but the shields never even flickered.

The city loomed large beneath them, tall, slender spires juxtaposed with heaps of rubble and curls of wispy gray smoke. Meri didn’t slow as they came in, just tightened her hold on Blue’s controls and wove between towers. She let the lasers hit her, though; Blue could take a lot more of a beating than the Alteans on the ground. How many had already died?

Alfor was down the ramp and halfway across the courtyard by the time Meri had Blue’s feet firmly on the ground, and she scrambled after him, calling back to Blue to raise her shield. The king would probably be pissed with her for chasing after him instead of staying behind, ready to flee through the wormhole he was no doubt planning to open for her with the city’s teludav array. But he hadn’t _actually_ told her to stay; he couldn’t expect her to just sit by while her home _burned_.

The castle was awash with chaos, civilians dragging wounded friends and relatives toward medical aides in pale blue robes, who shouted and waved, trying to direct the injured toward rooms that seemed to have become triage. Palace staff—senators, servants, minor officials, even a handful of guardsmen who looked as though they should have been in cryopods—rushed this way and that, hands pressed to ears to better hear the other end of conversations held over the comms networks. The largest stream of bodies, both staff and refugees, were headed toward the rear gardens. That was the fastest route to the royal airfield—to _escape_ , she hoped.

Alfor had already disappeared into the crowd, but Meri had a pretty good idea where he’d gone: the senate chamber, which had once been the throne room. From there, the city could be monitored, defense and evacuation coordinated. From there, Alfor might be able to contact Zarkon.

Meri’s paladin armor felt like a lie—especially as Alfor had made her leave her bayard on the castle-ship with all the others as one final line of defense, should Zarkon track down one or more of the hidden paladins. At least in that case he wouldn’t have _every_ advantage.

Lie or not, the armor made her instantly recognizable to everyone in the palace, and they parted around her, whispers of hope and fear chasing her as she raced after Alfor. They all knew who the paladins were—and they would know that Meri was not Lealle. Had Alfor sent word to Altea of his wife’s death, Meri wondered? If so, had the senate made the news public? Or was this the first the people of Altea had heard of the fracturing of the Paladins of Voltron?

Questions for another time. Meri rounded a corner, and the lifts to the upper floors of the central tower came into view. She ran faster.

“Meri!”

Meri’s breath caught in her throat, tears coming swift and unexpected. She stopped, wobbling as her feet tried to root themselves to the floor, but could not make herself turn. Her breath seemed to be racing her pulse, both of them fluttering ever more rapidly as racing footsteps approached.

Her mother came around in front of her, her face streaked with soot, her fine dress ragged and bloody. Meri’s breath faltered, but it took only a moment to see that the blood could not have been her own.

“Mother,” Meri said. “I--”

Her father crashed into her from behind, thin arms—a scribe’s arms, he’d always said—locking around her shoulders.

Meri pulled away, guilt and grief blocking her throat as she tried to apologize. Somehow, in the chaos of Lealle’s death, of Keturah’s death, of Rukka and Sa’s departure, of this horrific attack… Meri had never stopped to think of her family. Not once. Not her parents, who owned a trading company based in the capital; not her aunts, who were craftsmen in the countryside; not her cousins, scattered all across Altea.

She had to take them with her.

The thought made her laugh, a horrible, choking laugh that made her waver, her knees quaking so bad she nearly hit the floor. _Take them with me?_ she thought. _To our deaths?_ Even if she’d had time to find them all, what good would it do? At least if they stayed they could board one of the refugee ships. At least then, they might escape.

“Meri?” Her father looked older than she remembered him, slender and pale, his hair beginning to thin. “Meri, what happened? Who’s attacking us?”

The events of the past few days beat at Meri’s skull, and she glanced toward the lifts that would take her to Alfor. No time. She had no time to tell them everything that had happened.

“Zarkon,” she said. “Zarkon betrayed us. He killed Lealle. He killed Keturah. He— _quiznak._ I’m sorry.” Questions hovered in her parents’ eyes, but Meri was already backing away. “I’m sorry. Just—get to a ship, all right? Get to a ship.”

“What about you?” her mother asked, reaching out after her.

Meri managed a weak smile. “I’ll be right behind you,” she lied. “I just have to talk to Alfor first. Promise me you’ll go?”

She waited only until her father took her mother by the shoulders and nodded. Then she turned and ran for the lift, tears blurring her vision. Her parents were still there when she turned around, and as the lift doors closed between them, Meri whispered, “I love you.”

* * *

“ _Zarkon!_ ” Alfor’s voice filled the senate chamber and rolled through the hallways outside. Meri could hear it from the second she stepped out of the lift, and it carried her forward, propelling her like unseen jets. “Damn you, Zarkon. Show your face, you coward.”

“Alfor.”

Zarkon’s voice chilled Meri, freezing her in the doorway of the senate chamber. Alfor stood at the center of a whirlwind, his white armor pristine, his hair disheveled. Around him, people rifled through digital files, the chatter of two dozen voices resounding in Meri’s chest. But she had eyes only for Zarkon, who loomed larger than life on the main comms screen. He looked no different from the man who had helped to train Meri, the man who had always smiled at Coran’s jokes and deferred to Alfor’s decisions and listened to Lealle talk about her latest misadventures.

It was the same face, but Meri couldn’t help searching for signs of the rot festering inside him. Surely something must have shown. Surely something must have changed when he’d spat on the graves of two of his closest friends by attacking their homeworld. Surely…

But no. This was Zarkon, and he was just the man he’d always been.

“Call off your fleet,” Alfor said. His voice had dropped into a growl, but it carried easily over the surrounding chorus. “Altea has nothing to do with this petty grudge of yours.”

“Petty?” Zarkon’s lips quirked upward. “Yes, I think that word sums you up quite nicely, old friend.”

Alfor bristled, his whole body quivering with rage. “Call your fleet _off_.”

“Give me Voltron, and perhaps I will.”

Alfor laughed. “Hand a traitor the key to the universe’s greatest weapon?”

“Just the Black, then,” Zarkon said. “It is mine by right. Unless you’ve found someone else worthy enough to pilot it?”

They hadn’t, of course. There hadn’t been time. They’d only reclaimed— _rescued—_ Black a few days ago. There had been no time for a proper search.

Zarkon snorted. “Where is it?”

“Hidden,” Alfor said, his voice heavy. “Her and all the rest. Scattered across the universe—not even you could find them, Zarkon. Not in the time you have left.”

“I can make more time.”

“Perhaps you can,” Alfor allowed. “Perhaps you can find a way to double your lifespan. Triple it, even. But will it be enough? How many planets are there in the known universe, Zarkon? How many moons? How many asteroids, planetoids, Blamera, artificial bodies large enough to hide a piece of Voltron? How long will it take you to search all of them? A thousand years? Ten thousand? Longer?”

Zarkon was quiet for a long moment, anger twitching in the corner of his eye. “You know where they are.”

“I alone,” Alfor confirmed. “And I am here, on Altea. Check your scanners if you like. And know that if you destroy this planet, you lose the only hope you have of finding Voltron before you die.”

“And if I spare your planet, you would tell me?”

“No.” Alfor reached behind his back and produced a small pistol. Meri stifled a gasp. “But if you fire on the planet, or on the evacuating ships, I will shoot myself here and now.”

Zarkon’s lip curled. “And if I hold my fire, you will kill yourself or flee as soon as the last of them are safe. That’s not much of an offer, Alfor.”

Alfor bowed his head, breathing deeply. “I haven’t made my offer yet.” He holstered the pistol, then looked Zarkon in the eyes. “Come down yourself. Leave orders for your fleet to hold their fire. Duel me, one on one. If you win, you have me to interrogate as you please, and no one will be able to stop you from killing whoever you like.”

“And if you win?”

Alfor’s laugh rang hollow, settling a momentary hush over the room. “If I win, I suspect your fleet will seek vengeance, paid in my blood and the blood of my people. But at least I will have given them time to flee.” He reached down and tapped the pistol at his hip. “Your choice, Zarkon. Pry the secret out of me, or throw away your chance at ultimate power.”

“Fine,” Zarkon said, turning his head to one side. “Tell the fleet to fall back. We take no action until the King of Altea is in our grasp.” His eyes narrowed. “I’ll see you shortly, Alfor.”

The screen went dark, then flickered out of existence. Its absence shattered the spell that had been holding Meri in place, and she hurried across the room as Alfor began shouting orders to hasten the evacuation.

He turned toward a group of senators behind him and caught sight of Meri. His face darkened. “What are you doing here?”

She faltered, then squared her shoulders. “You can’t face him alone. He’s the best warrior we had.”

“I only need to delay him,” Alfor said. “And _you_ must get back to Blue. The two of you _cannot_ be here when the ceasefire ends.”

“You think he’ll go back on his word, then?”

“I know it.” Alfor sighed, turning her toward the door. “As soon as he thinks he has me in his grasp, the window will close. You must be gone before then.”

“But--”

“ _Go._ ” He paused, voice softening. “Don’t worry. I won’t let him take me alive.”

She spun, a protest clawing at her lips, but they’d reached the door. It slid shut between them, and none of Meri’s pounding could convince it to open again.

Her heart beat in her throat, squeezing more tears from her eyes with every labored pulse that seemed to say, _he’s dead, they’re dead, all dead._ It was only Meri now, the last surviving member of Team Voltron. The last person left fighting her fate.

But what could she do? If she stayed, Zarkon would claim Blue. Meri would go the same way as Keturah. Zarkon would be that much closer to his goal.

She had to leave. She had to get beyond the atmosphere before it was too late for Alfor to open the wormhole to the planet that would be her tomb.

The lower corridors were quieter now, most of the castle’s occupants already gone to the ships. Even the injured had been taken. A few healers remained with the dead and dying, administering what relief they could at the end of the world. The only sounds were the faint whimpers of the wounded, the beeping of medical equipment, and Meri’s own footsteps, ringing loud in empty archways.

Mobile cryopods had been stacked in the corridor, some of them cracked, some dented, some, it seemed, merely forgotten. She walked past them, then stopped, a thought cracking through the shroud of grief cast over her mind.

It was a ludicrous thought, a desperate hope. It would most likely end with her dead of a poorly-calibrated freezing cycle. But she was dead anyway. What difference did it make how she went?

The pods were a bit too ungainly to lift on her own, but there were gravity modules nearby and a magnetic handle she could use to drag the lightened pod behind her. It slowed her, and the ringing silence instilled her with a cold panic. Down the hall she went, past empty rooms, over trails of blood and grime. Out the side door into the courtyard where Blue waited.

A rumble of confusion greeted Meri when she arrived, swearing as she heaved on the magnetic handle. One of the gravity modules was faltering, but Blue came to meet her, scooping up the cryopod along with Meri herself.

“It’s nothing,” she said to the unasked question. “I’ll explain after we get away from here.”

She left the pod at the base of the ramp and hastened to the controls. There was already a comms line open to the senate chamber, Alfor’s deeply lined face staring back at her.

His eyes fluttered shut as she entered the camera’s frame. “Thank the ancients,” he muttered. “Now go. Quickly. Zarkon will be here soon.”

Blue turned with the barest prod, gathering herself for a leap that carried them to the edge of the atmosphere in a single surge.

“Alfor?” Meri said as a wormhole blossomed before her.

“I’ve told you, Meri, you must--”

“Thank you.” Meri’s words cut Alfor off, and he stared at her, speechless. “You’re saving a lot of lives with this.” She paused, breathing deeply, then pushed toward the wormhole. “Grace of the ancients be with you, Your Majesty.”

“Grace of the ancients be with you, paladin,” Alfor said.

In the next instant, Meri and Blue plunged into the wormhole, severing her connection to Alfor.

* * *

Meri didn’t immediately recognize the planet Alfor had sent her to—a planet painted in blues and greens, dark and silent on all her scanners. It was only as she brought Blue low over a lush valley and spotted the locals staring at the sky and ducking for cover that she recognized it.

Hovent Sector.

The planet had no name, but it didn’t need one. They’d fought only a single battle in the area, and it had ended with this planet’s crystal poisoned.

“He sent us to a dying planet?” Meri didn’t have it in her to rage any longer, or to fear the implications of this revelation for her future. All she felt was a hollow sort of ache, disbelief mingled with resignation.

Why shouldn’t Alfor send them here? Their scientists had estimated a thousand years until the planet could no longer support life; by then, as far as Alfor knew, Meri would be long dead. By then, she hoped, the new paladins would have been chosen and made their move against Zarkon. And if not, then Blue could enter a kind of hibernation, saving a partial charge for the day she was needed once more. Except…

Meri glanced behind her, to the cryopod waiting just out of her line of sight. Without Quintessence, the stasis would fail. Blue could power it with her own Quintessence for a time, but that could leave her unable to fly, and Meri still might end up dead, alone on a forgotten planet.

The emotion hit her then, wrapping her heart in its fist and squeezing until the corners of her vision began to darken. Hastily she searched the ground for somewhere to hide Blue. She was over a mountain range now, its peaks tall enough and jagged enough to keep someone from stumbling upon them by accident. She turned, eyes watering with the glint of sunlight on snow, and headed for the silver sheen of a frozen lake nestled in a high valley.

Ice cracked beneath Blue’s paws as she landed, and Meri sat back, staring out at stark white snow and slivers of gray stone and a wide swath of crystal blue sky.

It was as good as anywhere else.

She stood, staggering to the entry ramp as the tears forced their way out. First one, then another, then a steady stream of them escaped, tracing hot paths down her cheeks as she heaved the cryopod up into the cockpit. Blue rumbled confusion in Meri’s head, and it deepened to alarm as Meri began to connect the power conduits to Blue’s systems. Her trembling hands made the work difficult, but she quite literally had nothing better to do with her time.

_So much death._

The cockpit was stifling with the memory of Lealle’s presence. Keturah’s final scream resounded in the air. The sunlight bleaching patches on the floor was the glow of Altea, burning. Was Alfor dead by now? How many of their people had escaped in the time their king had bought them with his blood?

Blue’s alarm faded, replaced with sorrow and comfort, and a series of lights ignited on the panel where Meri was working, as though to show her how to get the pod set up.

Meri gave a warbling laugh and pressed her hand to the wall. “Thanks, girl,” she whispered. The work went more quickly with Blue’s help, and soon the indicator lights on the cryopod were glowing faint amber as it ran a calibration sequence. “Will you be able to end the cycle?”

Blue rumbled assent.

“Good. That’s… that’s good.” Meri’s breath trembled as she breathed out, sweeping sweaty hair back from her forehead. “Wake me up if anyone approaches, or else in five hundred years. I want us to have plenty of time to figure out a plan if it looks like we’re going to run out of Quintessence before your new paladin shows up.”

_**New?** _

A barrage of half-formed images tickled the edge of Meri’s mind, most of them images of Meri herself, as seen through Blue’s eyes.

 _**You,** _ Blue said. _**No other.** _

Meri smiled, blinking rapidly. “I know. I _know_ , gorgeous. I don’t want to give this up, either, but Alfor was right. Our bond just isn’t strong enough. You need to find a _real_ paladin for yourself if you want to go against Zarkon.”

_**No.** _

Blue’s presence in Meri’s mind balked as it brushed up against her resolution, a flicker of fear swiftly replaced with anger.

_**No.** _

“I’m sorry, Blue,” she whispered. “But you deserve better than me.”

Blue went on raging, her roars pressing at Meri both inside and out, a wordless scream of anguish and desperation that stole the breath from Meri’s lungs. She squeezed her eyes shut, new tears slipping past her lashes as she went to the controls and laid her hand on the dashboard.

“I relinquish my bond,” she said, the words barely audible through the rush of blood in her ears. She gathered the Quintessence that tethered her to Blue, pictured it like an armful of juniberry flowers plucked from fields that might already have burned to ash.

Then she let go. The flowers fell, scattering around her. The wind caught some and whisked them away. Others fell into a stream and drifted on the current. Blue’s roars faded, until they sounded only in her ears and not inside her soul.

Meri gasped, staggering at the cavern yawning inside her, a great, ragged hole where Blue had been. She choked on a sob, clutching at the seat beside her to keep from collapsing, and heaved in air, trying to chase away the shadows plaguing her vision.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, as Blue continue to roar. “I’m sorry.”

Then she staggered toward the cryopod, collapsed against the back wall, and sealed herself in.


	2. Wheels of Stars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Last time... Meri and Alfor returned to Altea as Zarkon began his attack. Alfor challenged Zarkon to a duel to give the people of Altea time to escape, and Meri took Blue and a mobile cryopod and escaped to Earth, where she broke the paladin bond before putting herself in stasis for five hundred years.

Meri woke with frozen tears prickling at her cheeks. The usual post-stasis confusion clawed at her, and she floundered, wondering why the castle was so dark. Had something happened? Was the ship damaged? She seemed to be alone, but that didn’t make sense; someone was always there at the end of a healing cycle, if only to make sure the patient didn’t concuss themself falling out of the pod. And why had she been crying? Why did she still feel like crying? There was an unbearable pressure in her chest, and her eyes watered with pain as she brushed the frozen tears from her cheeks. They seemed to have sunk hooks into her skin.

What _had_ happened?

Blue raised the lighting as Meri’s knees hit the floor, and the timid glow wrenched her mind back into the present.

_Hovent Sector._

Altea was burning, and she was in the Hovent Sector.

Altea _had burned._ A glance out the viewscreen showed neither friend nor foe advancing across the snowy ground or descending from the star-flecked sky. No alarms were blaring, either, which meant nothing had changed to make Blue rouse Meri early. Five hundred years had passed since she shut herself in the cryopod.

Five _hundred_ years. That was the length of an average Altean lifespan, which meant that nearly everyone Meri knew would be dead now, even if they had made it off Altea. A few of the children might still be out there somewhere, but they would have grown old. They would be grandparents by now. Great-grandparents.

Meri doubled over, her breath coming in uneven gasps. Her parents were dead. Aunts and cousins, dead. Alfor, _dead._ Rukka and Sa _dead_ , just like Lealle and Keturah. Allura—

For an instant, the world around Meri faded, and she was utterly, irrationally certain that Allura and Coran were dead, too. Someone had claimed Yellow, or perhaps Green, or Zarkon had found a way to use Red to track down the castle. Allura had died in her sleep, had died the day she awoke. Had made a noble effort to build a new team, but something had prevented her from locating Blue. Without her, and without Red, they couldn’t form Voltron. Couldn’t even lower the protections around Black. Zarkon had triumphed, Allura and Coran had perished, and now Meri and Blue were all that remained of the universe’s last hope.

“Blue.”

The word came out strangled, Meri’s lungs incapable of drawing in a full breath. Her hand seized on the armrest of the chair ahead of her, and she hauled herself to her feet, a thousand terrifying possibilities flashing behind her eyelids.

“Blue,” she said again, more firmly. “Did we pick up any transmissions from the castle while I was out? Anyone try to get in touch?”

As soon as she sat in the pilot’s seat, it lurched, propelling her back from the controls, back almost to the far wall, where she sat, stunned.

“What the…?” She tipped her head back, glaring at the ceiling. “What was that for?”

For a moment, there was no answer. Then--

A rushing in her ears. A fire raging in her chest, spreading outward, consuming her and leaving cold ashes behind. The sensation brought horrific wounds to mind. Holes burned by lasers, half cauterized, hot to the touch. Gaping troughs ripped open by the claws of a monster. Flesh charred and torn by a nearby explosion.

The pain faded to something duller, and Meri instantly wished for it to return. At least the pain had distracted her from _this._ It was a wound, as sure as anything she’d imagined, only this wasn’t a wound of the flesh. This was a gaping hole in her head, in her chest. _This_ was what had left her gasping for air. _This_ was why she’d been so staggeringly convinced that she was alone in the universe.

Because she was.

Or rather, because _Blue_ was.

An image appeared on the viewscreen. The same view visible outside, except that in the image, it was the middle of a bright, cloudless day. As Meri watched, the sun set over the lip of the valley and stars appeared overhead. The moon appeared at the edge of the frame, then faded as the sun rose behind her. It set again, more quickly, and the stars returned. Then again, and again.

As the display sped up, one day blended into the next; occasional flashes of sunlight or snowstorm hardly discernible in the perpetual darkness. The stars burned on, the only constant, and then even they began to move, some of them disappearing below the horizon, others appearing to take their places.

The vision sped up still more, the stars wheeling through the cycle of seasons time and again. Each repetition sank into Meri like an accusation, and by the time Blue finished her display, Meri had both feet up on the seat, her mouth pressed into the hollow between her knees. She didn’t look away, though. She didn’t deserve that respite.

“I…” Meri shook her head, her voice failing. She could feel the hollowness inside, the open wound that had once been her bond with Blue. Severed as it had been, it ached—and Meri had left Blue to suffer alone for half a millennium. “I’m sorry, Blue. I just—I had to—Damn it, Blue, you _know_ it had to be done!”

Blue growled, the way she usually did when someone had hurt her paladin. Except this time, it wasn’t coming from inside Meri’s chest, bolstering and warm.

This time, it was outside her. This time, it was directed _at_ her.

She flinched, but she refused to cower. “You need a new paladin, Blue! How the quiznak do you expect to manage that if you’re still bonded to me?” She waited for a response, but of course none came. How could it? They no longer shared that connection.

A new box appeared on the viewscreen, words scrolling by so quickly Meri almost didn’t have time to read them.

 _I do not choose this,_ the words read.

Meri’s breath hitched. “Blue? You’re--?”

_Talking. Yes. You reject me. I do not reject you. You are **mine.** You are always mine._

Tears pressed at Meri’s eyes. “That not how it works!” Her voice rang loud in the silence, and she sank her fingers into her hair, pulling at her roots as she struggled for calm. “What happens when your new paladin shows up, huh? What then?”

_What happens when **other** paladins arrive, and I have not chosen?_

“I’ve _already failed,_ Blue. I tried, and I wasn’t good enough. Alfor was right. You need a new generation.” And Meri couldn’t afford to think of the possibility that she could continue on as paladin. To think like that—to get her hopes up? No. It was more than one girl’s feelings at stake here. “It’s not like I’m leaving you, Blue. I’ll still be here. I’ll help train whoever you choose. But you _have_ to pick someone.”

_Pick who? I see no one._

Meri sighed. Blue was rumbling, the sound not quite steady enough to be a purr. But it brushed up against Meri’s feet and it gathered in her ears, and it was almost as good as having Blue inside her head.

“All right, fine. We’ll come back to that problem.” She sat up, then hesitated. The controls were still some ten paces away—out of her reach, as though Blue didn’t recognize the presence of her pilot. Well. Meri _wasn’t_ her pilot, as it happened.

Still, it hurt.

She stood, approaching the console on leaden feet. “More important, how’s our Quintessence doing? Should we be looking for a new hidey hole to curl up in? Or… Hmm. How far do you suppose it _is_ to the nearest vital planet? If I store up as much Quintessence as I can hold, that’ll stretch your reserves, but we’ll still have to make sure we don’t run--”

Meri let out a yelp as the seat suddenly shot forward, taking her legs out from under her. She landed askew in the seat, one arm clutching the headrest, one foot propped up on the console.

A new message blinked at her from the screen. _You will hurt neck, stooping like that._

Meri laughed, and Blue’s answering rumble soothed some of the ache left over from the ragged half-a-bond. _I really am sorry,_ Meri thought as she righted herself and began her search, though she knew Blue wouldn’t be able to hear her now. _I don’t want to lose you, either._

* * *

Meri wasn’t sure what it was supposed to look like when a planet was halfway to dead, but she was fairly certain it wasn’t _this._

The scans showed nothing of interest, but Blue didn’t have anything like the array of scanners the castle contained, so it stood to reason that it would miss a few things. But when they went for a short flight across the countryside, it was more of the same: green fields, thriving forests, animals scampering this way and that, small villages with primitive buildings and people turning to stare at the sky.

“It’s… fine?” Meri said. They flew slowly, Meri’s touch on the controls not as deft as it should have been. She was surprised she was able to fly at all, honestly, now that she wasn’t bonded to Blue—but Blue wanted to hold on, and evidently that was enough. It wasn’t what they’d had, but Meri could get by. She had to.

They took off in another direction, but found only more of the same. Forest, field, mountain, a great, wide stretch of water. Blue dove beneath the surface, and Meri gaped at the life around them. Everything from tiny, silvery fish to creatures nearly the size of Blue’s head that sang to her as they passed.

 _Alive,_ Blue said on the screen she’d taken over for the purpose of communication. She kept herself to short sentences now that they were moving, for which Meri was grateful. It took an awful lot of concentration to fly when she wasn’t mentally linked with the machinery.

“Yeah,” Meri said, astounded. “But how?” Five hundred years should have seen a marked decline in the Quintessence levels of this planet. Five hundred years should have put them right in the depths of the most intense years of the dying off. It would have taken a century or two for anything to feel the loss of the crystal, and the last hundred years would see a few hardy species of plant and fungus eking out an existence.

But the large creatures—creatures like the ones still singing to Blue as she burst back into the sky—they should have been among the first to die out. The amount of Quintessence a creature like that would consume…

“Something strange is going on here,” Meri said, turning them back toward land. The controls seemed to resist her for a moment, and Meri wasn’t sure if that was Blue longing for another dip into the sea or Meri herself, too used to Blue responding to a command before Meri gave it.

They didn’t return to the mountain where they’d spent the last five hundred years, but found a network of canyons and caves that would shelter them just as well.

Once Blue had settled in, Meri found a ration bar and ate slowly, contemplating her next move.

“We don’t seem to be in imminent danger of Quintessential starvation,” she said thoughtfully, chewing. Blue came equipped with a standard emergency kit, including half a year’s rations. Stasis virtually suspended Meri’s metabolism, but she did need to eat—and she needed more than a single day’s ration after so long in stasis. She’d gone through two days’ worth already, and was contemplating a third. She wanted to leave as much as possible, in case she did have to strike out in search of a new planet. Or in case the new paladin arrived and they had to immediately go on the run from Zarkon’s forces.

Was Zarkon even still around? Or his empire, at least? Surely after five hundred years someone would have put an end to the war.

But then… wasn’t that the very reason Alfor had sent them into hiding? This would all seem a terrible waste if it turned out the universe had never really needed them.

“Hey, Blue? Can you call up a map of distress beacons from the last five hundred years?”

Blue complied, displaying a map on the screen before Meri. It was an imperfect rendering of three-dimensional space, Blue not being equipped with a holo-projector, and without the castle’s deep space scanners, the limits fell some galaxies short of Altea’s coordinates.

But it was enough.

Red pinpricks burned at the very edges of Blue’s scan. Not a great many of them, but Meri remembered Earth being a massive distance from Altea—and in the opposite direction from Galra. If the war had come within Blue’s range, then Zarkon’s influence had spread far.

Meri drummed her fingers on the console. “We have to keep waiting,” she said. “Until you find a better paladin, or until we know the others have found _their_ paladins, we can’t risk showing our hand.” She crumpled her ration bar wrapper and stuck it in the waste chute before heading back toward the dark cryopod. “Same as before—five hundred years, unless someone shows up or the Quintessence levels drop.”

She stepped up to the pod, but it remained dark, its glass front sealed.

Meri frowned. “Blue?” She glanced over her shoulder, but no words appeared on the viewscreen. “Something wrong, girl?”

Silence.

Then, slowly, the pod began to power up. When the door finally slid open, though, Meri hesitated. “Don’t worry. Another day or two, and Allura’s going to come down in the castle-ship with the new team. You won’t even have time to miss me.”

Blue didn’t answer. Meri suspected she knew the truth: if Meri had really believed that Allura was on her way, she wouldn’t be putting herself in stasis at all.

* * *

Five hundred years later, there had been no change. Her bond with Blue was still tender and incomplete; the planet was still healthy, though they’d now passed the time Alfor’s scientists had named as its latest possible death; and there was still no sign of Allura, the new blue paladin, or anyone else. Dozens more new distress beacons had been activated, and many subsequently silenced.

One other change caught Meri off-guard: carvings. In the caverns.

Blue said some of the planet’s inhabitants had come exploring, and though they’d regarded her with awe and reverence, none had struck her as having the necessary qualifications to be her new paladin.

But they’d returned, time and again, carving stories into the walls—stories that bore a striking resemblance to the battle that had been fought here a thousand years ago. Meri identified wormholes, and little angular shapes reminiscent of Galra fighters. And of course the castle-ship, the Voltron Guard, and Voltron herself. Blue was represented more than any other figure, often with little bipedal creatures bowing before her. Meri vaguely remembered the inhabitants of this planet resembling Alteans with oddly shaped ears and dull brownish or black hair.

“What do they think you are, a god?”

Blue’s purr sounded entirely too pleased, and Meri rolled her eyes.

“Probably for the best you didn’t pick one of them,” she said brightly. “You’ve got enough of an ego already.”

Meri remained awake for five days, half hoping to encounter some locals, though Blue said the carvers hadn’t visited in nearly a century. When she finally gave up hope, she returned to the cryopod, leaving instructions for Blue to wake her in another five hundred years. When she woke and saw that nothing much had changed, she put herself under for a millennium, and then another, and another. She stayed awake for only a day or two between each cycle. Long enough to catch up with Blue, to track the slow progress of war across the universe, to wonder why no one had yet come to find them.

It was always when the fear crept in—fear that she’d been right the first time, and the new paladins had risen and died without her—that she plunged back into the thoughtless, unfeeling void of stasis. Each time she woke, the fear was quicker to come, and each time it was weaker. Not so much terror as acceptance.

She was alone.

She had waited five thousand, five hundred years when she finally let herself accept the probability that what she had been waiting for might never happen.

“No time limit this time, gorgeous,” she murmured as she stepped up to the pod. “I can’t do this again. Wake me up when you’ve found your new paladin, okay?”

Blue purred, the sound as mournful as Meri’s thoughts, but made no protest as she put Meri under.

Then, for a long while, Meri knew nothing at all.

* * *

“ _He’s little.”_

_A larger, older face looked down at her, eyes crinkled, smile disappearing behind his dark mustache. “He’s very little. Do you want to hold him?”_

_Meri looked sharply toward a woman with an infant in her arms, and she felt as if she knew these people. Shouldn’t she know them? Fear was fluttering in her chest, but her face was tight with a grin as she nodded, reaching out stumpy fingers for the baby._

_Gentle hands showed her how to sit, how to position her arms, and then a newborn—her brother, she thought, though she didn’t remember_ having _a brother—was placed in her lap, his head supported by her arm and her father’s hand beneath it._

“ _There you go. Just like that. That’s not so hard, is it?”_

_Something contracted inside her, not quite joy and not quite terror. The baby was so small, so fragile. It seemed if she moved at all, he might shatter. Part of her wanted to run away, to give the baby back to the grown-ups, who would know how not to hurt him._

_But there was another part of her, a stronger part of her, that curled around the baby with a protectiveness that caught her off guard. Yes, he was small, and fragile, and helpless, but he was her_ brother. _That meant it was her job to protect him, no matter how scared she wanted to be._

* * *

Quite abruptly, Meri was aware of the cold prickling at her limbs like a thousand needles. Her sinuses felt plugged up with the after-effects of stasis, and she wondered, distantly, how long she’d been asleep this time.

It was only an idle thought, though, for the dreams had not yet released her. She stumbled, separating from the little boy she’d been dreaming of—not the newborn, but his older brother, a brown-skinned boy with the round cheeks and toothy grin of a young child. The scene hung before her for a moment: the two children sitting on a narrow bed beside their mother; the father hovering nearby. A woman in a teal uniform poked her head into the room and said something that was lost to the fuzz in Meri’s ears.

She blinked, caught a glimpse of Blue’s cockpit ablaze with aquamarine lights, and found herself standing on a wooden dock. The boy from before was there, a few years older than the last vision, his arms wrapped around a toddler’s waist.

“Mateo, no!” the boy cried, tugging him away from the edge of the dock and the water below. “It’s too deep there.”

The toddler, Mateo, squealed his displeasure, and strained against his brother’s hold. “Whi’krs,” he mumbled, making grabby hands. Meri stepped around the wrestling pair to peer into the water. There she saw a stuffed toy, black with white patches on its four paws, floating in the water.

The boy huffed, sitting Mateo down. “If I get Whiskers for you will you promise to stay out of the water?”

Mateo sniffled, stilled, and pouted up at his brother, who heaved a sigh. After just an instant, he squared his shoulders. Stepping up to the edge of the dock, he pressed a finger to his lips. “Don’t tell Mom.”

A flicker in the vision. Half an instant of a sodden boy, sullen, his mother towing him by the elbow away from the lake. She was yelling at him, an undercurrent of fear in her voice. Mateo ran by, clutching his bedraggled toy, Whiskers, and the older brother smiled.

It was vertigo that pulled her out of the vision this time. The glass had slid back from the cryopod, letting in a puff of warmer air, and Meri’s knees buckled.

The same boy, older, stalking down sharp-edged halls with harsh lighting. He wore the same orange uniform as the boy walking beside him—a military uniform, it seemed.

“I don’t care, Hunk,” the boy said. “Gunderson’s part of this team, whether he wants to be or not, and the fact is he’s working himself too damn hard. I mean, seriously, have you _seen_ the bags under his eyes? One of these days he’s gonna fall asleep in the sim and get us _all_ expelled.”

The words were harsh, the tone bordering on irritation, but in this space Meri could feel what went unsaid. The concern. The worry, not for his own academic standing, but for this Gunderson person’s health. _He’s part of this team,_ the boy had said. Meri knew he’d meant, _He’s part of this family,_ and the strength of the boy’s conviction startled her. It reminded her of another time in another hallway; a hand on her shoulder and bright eyes searching her own.

_You’re part of this team, Meri. That makes you part of my family, too._

“Lealle.”

Meri was hardly conscious of speaking the name aloud, but as soon as she did the vision faded. A dozen more images flickered through her mind—the boy in a primitive shuttle simulation, crashing into the rocks of an unfamiliar moon—the boy in a cavern, his hands trailing over familiar carvings that flared to life at his approach—the boy in Blue’s cockpit, in Meri’s armor—Lealle’s armor— _his_ armor. Meri caught herself as she collapsed in front of the cryopod, and one final image flashed behind her eyelids, crystal clear and near enough to steal her breath away.

The boy, now grown, stood in darkness, only the glow of his paladin armor illuminating him. Something about the armor struck Meri as unusual—the coloring, perhaps, or the design. It was a subtle change, and the image was too dark and too fleeting to be sure it was more than an errant shadow. Figures with glowing yellow eyes moved around him, but his gaze never wavered from an empty patch dead ahead. He held one hand to his side, where some dark liquid trickled down the pale armor covering his thigh.

He was hurt, badly, but someone was counting on him. Someone important. Meri could feel it, a steady pulse beneath her skin.

“Lord Zarkon has spoken,” whispered a voice from the darkness. “The traitor's life is forfeit. Hand him over, and this all ends.”

The young man’s eyes flickered to the watching yellow eyes— _Galra_ eyes—and his posture stiffened. “You're not taking him.”

“You would sacrifice everything for that cowardly, hypocritical, self-righteous--?”

“Keith.” The young man smiled, the flame inside him pulsing brighter. His heart pounded with a familiar rhythm, singing _family, family, family_ inside his veins. He raised his hand, leveling a pistol at someone Meri couldn’t see. “His name is Keith, and if you want him, you can damn well kill me first.”

A laugh, cold and thin. “That can be arranged.”

The enemy shifted, Meri’s vision faded, and the last thing she heard was a sharp gasp, followed by the sound of something heavy hitting the floor.

* * *

Meri came back to herself on the floor behind the pilot seat. She grabbed onto it as she began to stand, and the flickering still-frames of her dreams—visions of the future, it had to be—came back to her. She’d seen that boy sitting here, wearing the armor of the blue paladin.

Really, what else needed to be said?

“You’ve found him,” Meri said, keeping her tone neutral with an effort. There was no reason for hurt and resentment to be rising like bile in the back of her throat. _She’d_ pushed for this. _She’d_ told Blue it was the only way. She had no one to blame but herself if that meant Blue had finally found someone else to pilot her.

Blue rumbled, part question and part apology. It gave Meri a headache, the sound prodding at the soft spot in her mind where the paladin bond had once been. She didn’t know what had caused the dreams, if Blue had done it on purpose or if it had been a reflex triggered by her sudden elation, but the images had come through the tattered bond. It ached in more ways than one, but Meri couldn’t allow herself to dwell on the pain.

“You found him,” she said again, straightening. The images had come in such a rush near the end that she couldn’t say how old the boy had been when he’d found Blue. Close to adulthood, she guessed. Most of the times she’d seen him in armor, he’d looked close to her own age.

Or… perhaps not? Meri wasn’t actually sure how long his species lived, though she was fairly certain he was a native of this planet. Which meant, considering the level of tech she’d seen in her dreams, it must have been centuries, if not millennia since she’d last been awake.

It was with some trepidation that she went to the console and checked Blue’s systems to see how long she’d been asleep. What she saw sent another stab of queasy, aching fear through her center. Thousands of years had passed—nearly ten thousand in total since the fall of Voltron. Was it possible that Allura and Coran were still out there somewhere? That the remaining paladins had never appeared?

She saved her questions for another time. Blue had found her paladin, which meant Meri needed to track him down and explain the situation to him. She’d been hoping for someone a little older, in all honesty, but it might help if he was younger than her—if only so he’d listen as she trained him up. They could take a year or two, perhaps. Give him time to adjust before they set out to discover what had become of the universe since Zarkon’s initial rampage.

“Where is he?” Meri asked.

The screens flickered to life, as though Blue was going to say something, but the cursor blinked a few times, silent.

Then Blue forced another image into Meri’s head. Through the haze of pain, she saw it: a house, small and plain-looking; two floors, with a brown slanted roof, white wooden shutters framing glass windows, and a patch of green grass out front.

“Okay, but where _is_ this?” Meri demanded.

The cursor blinked.

_Close._

Meri sighed, raising a hand to massage her forehead. Close. Sure. But what else could she do? She grabbed a water pack and a few meal bars, then headed out into the cave in search of the one who had replaced her.


	3. Oh Mother Dear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Last time... Meri spent ten thousand years in stasis, waking every so often to find that very little had changed--except for her severed bond with Blue. The last time she put herself under, she told Blue not to wake her until she'd found the new blue paladin. When he finally showed up, Meri woke to visions of his life, hazy and too quick to analyze. Realizing the significance of the visions, Meri set off at once in search of her successor.

It took Meri less than an hour to realize she’d made a mistake in leaving the caverns.

The people of this planet were not the innocent societies she’d encountered briefly during the Hovent Sector Battle ten thousand years ago, who regarded off-worlders with a kind of mysticism and wary respect. She’d always found that response off-putting in a way she couldn’t quite articulate, but she would have been glad for it now. Better awe and veneration, deserved or otherwise, than… this.

There was a city not far from the caverns—not far when she took Blue’s speeder, at least, though she was immensely grateful she’d thought to hide it outside the city, for from the first glace, she’d attracted a small crowd of onlookers. Some laughed at the armor she wore, mocking her by drawing their jackets’ hood low over their faces or making strange hand gestures. Others grabbed their children and steered them away from Meri, whispering in a language the universal translator didn’t have in its records.

Everyone stared. Openly or furtively, it made no difference. Everyone knew she was a stranger, and they didn’t trust her.

Her pace slowed while she was still a considerable distance from the tall, closely packed buildings of the city center, and her resolve wavered. With only a single copy of the universal translator to record data, it would take days to build a functional vocabulary, if not longer. She didn’t know how advanced this people’s technology was, and she could only assume they weren’t in contact with--

She caught herself before she thought, _Zarkon._ It had been ten thousand years. Surely he was dead by now. Surely his army had broken, with or without Voltron’s help.

But she couldn’t shake the vision she’d had of Blue’s new paladin facing down Galra—one of whom had mentioned Zarkon by name.

 _Either way, wandering around like a creep with no way to communicate isn’t an option,_ she told herself. She needed to learn the local language, and she needed clothes that would allow her to blend in. How she was supposed to manage either without money or a way to communicate, she didn’t know. But it wasn’t like she had any alternatives.

“Altea help me,” she muttered. Then, steeling herself against the odd looks, she set out on her new mission.

* * *

“Okay, first of all,” Meri said as she entered the cavern where Blue waited, a sack full of clothes and research materials slung over her shoulder. “I want it down in data that I’m not a thief.”

For a moment, it was as though her bond with Blue had never withered. Meri felt the other presence at the edge of her consciousness, rippling in a way that had always brought to mind quirked eyebrows.

Meri didn’t very much appreciate it now.

“I’m not lying,” she said. She’d left the speeder at the mouth of the tunnel, since she would need it before she took Blue anywhere beyond the relative safety of these caves. Blue lowered her head as Meri approached, and Meri climbed into the cockpit, never pausing in her justification. “It’s not technically _stealing_ if what you’re taking never belonged to someone else in the first place, right?”

Blue lifted her head a little more swiftly than she needed to, and Meri stumbled, dropping her haul.

She swept her hair out of her face and scowled. “It’s _not._ More like… money laundering.” Her scowl deepened as Blue flashed an intergalactic police sigil on the screens. “I never said it wasn’t a crime. Just that it’s not _stealing_. Let it never be said that I hurt someone in pursuit of my goals.”

Meri kicked the bag to the back of the cockpit, near the cryopod—she was going to have to take that out sooner or later; it made it kind of cramped in here, and seeing as _here_ was the best option she had for living quarters from now until she found the new paladin, the space was sorely missed.

It was an eclectic collection Meri had brought back, and she didn’t have to look at the screens to know Blue was curious. Laughing, Meri indulged her.

“Clothes,” she said, pulling out several of the outfits. She wasn’t convinced local clothes would be as comfortable as Altean fashion, but she’d been wearing this armor for ten thousand years—several weeks of which she’d been awake. She could make do with Blue’s sanitation field and cleanser packets instead of a proper shower, but she was in desperate need of clean clothes. Or clothes at all that weren’t her stiff black undersuit.

The people of this world seemed not to have any shapeshifting abilities, so Meri was not surprised to find that their clothes didn’t automatically resize to fit Meri’s body. She was, however, a little bit disappointed.

“Could be worse,” she said, shifting into the shape of the local species as she smoothed the loose-fitting patterned shirt and coarse blue pants. The shift didn’t alter her body much, only blunted her ears, dulled her hair, and masked her _glaes._ But she pushed it a bit, narrowing her shoulders and widening her hips to better fit the new clothes. It was an effort, but it made her more comfortable.

Besides, it was good practice. Considering the reaction she’d garnered today simply by wearing paladin armor, Meri was reluctant to show her face without a disguise. If she was going to spend extended periods of time searching for the house Blue had showed her, she was going to need to build up her stamina.

Tossing the armor in the sanitizer, Meri pulled the other items from her sack. “Recordings,” she said, waving several flat, rectangular boxes that she’d purchased from what she thought was an entertainment store. Certainly it had seemed too flashy to be an academic archive. “I hope they’re recordings, anyway. The pictures on this one match up to a recording they were playing on a weird screen. And _this_ \--” She pulled out a larger box and plopped it on the console. “This plays them. The translator got me that much, at least.”

She was _mostly_ sure the translator’s efforts were trustworthy.

“I figure this will give the translator a little bit of a baseline, especially with you and me to help it along. I’m going to have to actually learn the language—I _know_. Sa would never let me live this down.”

She dug out the rest of the recordings—she’d grabbed ten more or less at random, avoiding the ones that displayed scenes of battle on the boxes (a surprisingly difficult criteria to meet, considering the city didn’t look like one that had been recently at war). In the bottom of the bag were a few other odds and ends. Some local food, both to stretch her supplies and to give her an idea what she could expect to be living on for the next little while. And a little plastic card.

This had been the one thing she _had_ stolen, but only because she’d needed it to make her fake. Most locals used cards like these to pay for their purchases, so after watching several stores for most of the morning, Meri had stolen one, run back to the speeder, and used some of Sa’s old programs to analyze it.

She’d been worried, at first, that she wouldn’t be able to hack the planet’s banks—not being a Green and all—but their technology hadn’t come _that_ far since she’d been asleep. With the help of Sa’s tech and a little trial-and-error, Meri had managed to overwrite the card’s routing and balance, and now she had in her possession several thousand digital currency units that hadn’t existed before today.

The locals probably monitored money networks. She doubted they’d have seen anything like Sa’s programs before, but there was a chance they would still find and block her… creative source of income. That was all right. She had enough to get started, and she could figure out a better plan later.

“Okay,” she said, sitting back on her heels. The pants itched, and her shirt somehow managed to be at once too tight and distractingly loose, but she was just going to have to put up with that. “Let’s see what’s on these little discs.”

* * *

_Why is that one singing?_

Meri tipped her head to the side, tossing a handful of Cheetos into her mouth. “I’m… not honestly sure.”

 _Is it a fear response?_ _Mating behavior? Is this what humans consider comedic?_

The words disappeared from the screen as the song continued, and for a long moment, the cursor blinked away in silent confusion.

_Now that one’s singing. About a… cow. This movie makes no sense._

“You haven’t even given it a chance, Blue. Come on.”

 _I wish, I wish, I wish._ Blue gave an audible rumble. _You know what I wish? I wish you’d picked something else. It isn’t even about MY element. Where’s the water movies?_

Meri laughed, but she made no move to turn off the film. “I don’t think it’s _about_ the woods, really. It just… happens in the woods.” Blue didn’t argue; there wasn’t much point. It had been several months since Blue had found her paladin, and they’d made considerable strides in learning the language—English, it was called, and the planet was Earth, its people humans.

But Meri had turned off the universal translator, trying to force herself to practice unaided, and that made things difficult to understand. The music, she had to admit, wasn’t helping. And there _was_ a lot of it. Several dobashes — _minutes,_ to the locals—had already passed, and it was still going.

Blue began to purr, a surprisingly chipper sound, considering her complaints. It took Meri three lines to realize she was mimicking the song’s melody.

 _I will play this on endless loop,_ Blue threatened.

Meri laughed, but shut off the movie. “Okay, okay. You want to pick the next one?”

_We have watched them all._

Meri frowned, casting about her for a movie they hadn’t yet watched—but Blue was right. “Huh. Guess that means it’s time to head back into town, right? Eh, probably a good idea. I think I’ve got a good enough handle on the language to start looking for your paladin. Yeah?”

Blue hesitated, and Meri’s good mood withered. This was how it was between them now. Once Meri had gotten used to the fact that Blue had to speak to her through text on the screens, it was easy enough to forget the bond had ever been severed. They still got along. In fact, Blue was chattier than ever, though she claimed she hated speaking in such a crude manner. Imprecise, she called it. Inelegant.

But the friendly ease never lasted. Blue would sense something from her paladin, or Meri would mention him, or something would remind one of them of their old team, of Altea, of Zarkon. After that, they both retreated into awkward silence for the next several vargas.

It was as good a time as any to get some work done in town.

“Sorry, gorgeous,” Meri muttered, patting Blue’s snout on her way out. “I’ll be back soon. See if I can find some more Earth machines for you to make fun of, hmm?”

Blue made no response.

With a sigh, Meri pocketed her fake credit card—not the same one she’d made in haste that first day, but similar in function—and a cloth bag, then climbed into the speeder and set out toward Carlsbad.

* * *

Meri didn’t find the new paladin that day, nor the next, nor for a dozen more after that. Part of that came from the sheer size of the city—it had to be close to the size of Altea’s capital, and it wasn’t even the largest city in this _country_. As far as Meri could tell, it wasn’t even in the top hundred. Far from dying of Quintessential loss, Earth and its inhabitants seemed to have flourished in the last ten thousand years.

She still didn’t understand it.

Mostly, she tried not to think about it. Not about the size of the human population, or about the poisoned crystal at the planet’s core, or about how Blue’s paladin had ended up a short hop away from the cave where she was hidden.

It wasn’t the proximity itself that surprised Meri; even Blue couldn’t have watched an entire planet at once, so he would have had to be close for her to sense him so clearly. And Meri supposed she could hardly say that the odds were against them—it had been ten thousand years. If there were any paladin candidates on this planet at all, it was only a matter of time before one came close enough to Blue to be sensed.

No, Meri couldn’t fault logic or probability for her unease, especially with the way the paladin bond had a tendency to muddle cause and effect. Their eventual bond might have drawn the paladin toward Blue, or her proximity might have taken a small potential and grown it into something greater. _That_ wasn’t the problem.

The problem was how enthusiastically Blue had latched onto this young man. Even from the brief glimpse Meri had received, it was clear this was not a merely satisfactory match. Blue wanted this boy as strongly as she’d wanted Lealle. More strongly. His bond with Blue was going to be many times stronger than what Blue and Meri had shared.

And that stung.

“Not Blue’s fault I rushed the bond,” Meri reminded herself, wandering down a residential street. This had been her plan for the last few days, if she could call any of this a _plan_. Find a neighborhood with houses similar in style to the one Blue had showed her. Walk every street. Hope. She could make herself understood in English, but not easily, so trying to question people about someone she had only a vague image of would do her absolutely no good.

She would have expected the image in her head to fade after seeing hundreds of others just like it, but it remained fresh, as though it had been branded into her eyelids. She saw it every time she closed her eyes—the small white flowers dotting the flowerbeds, the bike lying abandoned in the driveway, the hose snaking across the lawn and plugged into the...what was it called? The sprinkler. She could picture children leaping through the tall, arcing sprays, though she wasn’t certain where the image had come from. One of the movies, perhaps? Or maybe Blue had seen it in her paladin’s memories and it had somehow found its way to Meri.

She still sometimes caught glimpses of Blue’s dreams.

Meri was so caught up in her own thoughts she almost didn’t recognize the house. When she did, she stopped. Stared. The house might have been conjured up by her imagination, it was such a perfect match. From the roof to the flowerbeds to the upstairs window with little stars plastered to the glass to the little boy squinting and shrieking with laughter as he jumped through the sprinkler’s spray.

Meri’s heart dropped into her feet.

There had to be some mistake. This was Mateo, and he only _looked_ like his brother. Very much like his brother.

No. The paladin must be older than he’d seemed in the later visions, old enough to already have children of his own—a painful truth if so, but easier to swallow than--

The boy stumbled to a stop near the sidewalk, his laughter tapering off as he noticed Meri there. His brow furrowed, and he stared up at her, blue eyes intense, as though he knew he should have recognized her.

“Lance?” a woman’s voice called out from inside the house. “Alejandro, it’s almost lunchtime! Come inside!”

The boy, Lance, turned his gaze back toward the house, and Meri barely constrained herself to a walk as she hastened to put distance between her and Blue’s chosen paladin. It _was_ him. She couldn’t deny that now. Something in those eyes, something in the understanding lurking just outside his reach as they faced each other down.

It was him.

He was a _child_. The first vision she’d had, the vision of the day Mateo was born—it must have only just happened when Blue saw it, for Lance was no older in person than he’d been inside that small, sterile hospital room.

Fear, anger, and a sickly, selfish sort of relief churned together in Meri’s gut. He was too young. He couldn’t be a paladin yet—not for _years._

Meri didn’t have to give up her bond with Blue just yet.

* * *

Guilt kept Meri close to Lance’s house. Guilt that someone so young had been pulled into her war without his consent. Guilt at her own satisfaction at still being _needed._ She owed it to Lance to look out for him, and she owed it to Blue to make sure she got to meet her paladin one day—far, _far_ in the future.

 _Did you know, Blue?_ Meri thought, sitting on the curb four or five houses down from Lance’s—close enough to see if he or his parents left, but not close enough to see him. _Did you know how young he was?_ It seemed impossible for Blue to have _not_ known, but she didn’t think like organic beings. Blue had seen a great deal of Lance’s life—probably more than the scattered glimpses Meri had caught. _Could_ she know what he was now, or did she only see what he would be?

Meri sighed, tilting her head to catch the sun. In her human shift, her hair was a deep brown, and coarser than she was used to, curling around itself and tickling her neck with frizzled ends. It had grown from chin-length to a hands-breadth past her shoulders in the months since she’d woken up, and she was beginning to regret not finding a pair of shears to hack it off sooner.

She kept turning plans over in her mind, only to reject each in turn. She wasn’t about to start training this kid—even if, by some quirk of culture, his parents allowed it. She might consider telling _them_ , letting _them_ decide when he was ready, but whenever she tried to tell even a portion of her story to strangers on the street, the looks it garnered convinced her that she’d never be believed.

So what, then? What did you do with a waist-high Defender of the Universe? She couldn’t just stalk him for the next ten years, but if she backed off, there was no guarantee that he would be here when she returned. Maybe she could get a job at his school… though she hadn’t a clue how she would manage teaching human children about ancients-only-knew what subjects, most of which she probably knew too much about, or else nothing at all.

Maybe she should talk it over with Blue. A self-aware semi-organic robot might not be the _best_ source of advice on connecting with children, but her first choice, Lealle, was long dead, and her second, Coran, was frozen solid on some distant planet.

She hoped he was still frozen. She hoped, in those moments when she allowed herself to hope, that Blue was the first to have chosen a new paladin, so Meri could be there when Allura emerged from stasis and realized what had happened.

The afternoon heat was approaching unbearable, and Meri was just about to give up for the day and return to the caverns in the foothills, when two figures appeared at the end of the driveway up the road. Lance sprinted ahead of his mother, who carried the baby Mateo in a sling.

“Alejandro! Slow down!”

Lance’s steps stuttered to a halt, and he hesitated a long moment before turning back toward his mother. In doing so, he caught sight of Meri, and despite the distance between them, Meri swore she could see the recognition spark in his eyes. She worried, for a moment, that he might call out to her, forcing her to explain her presence to the mother, but within a few seconds his mother had caught up to him, taken his hand, and tugged him on, following the road away from Meri.

She hesitated only a moment, then followed, keeping her distance. A voice very much like Allura’s kept chiding her, warning her that she was going to frighten Lance and his mother, and _then_ how would she ever tell him what he was?

But sitting around doing nothing wasn’t getting her anywhere, either.

Thankfully, they were only going a short distance, and they didn’t pass anyone else along the way to the small park at the end of the block. There was a playground here, which Lance sprinted toward as soon as his mother released his hand.

“Be careful, cariño,” she called, taking Mateo to a bench in the shade of a nearby tree.

Meri continued on past the playground, trying not to seem as though the lone little boy scrambling up the plastic tower to the top of the slide mattered one way or another. She followed the path, exploring the small park—a pavilion with a cement floor and three picnic tables, a pair of drinking fountains by what she vaguely recognized as a basketball court, several more benches by a statue of… a fish? Meri search the ground for a plaque. Not that it would help her, as she’d had comparatively little practice reading English. She’d have to fix that.

There was no plaque, in any case, but the shrieks of laughter from the playground reached her even here. The path had taken her around a small, thick stand of trees, hiding Lance and his family from Meri’s sight, but that only made it worse. That laugh… Lance was so young, so bright. Nothing at all like Meri, who still woke sometimes with a block of ice in her chest, who felt the absence of her paladin bond like a cavity in her head, compounding the loss of everyone else she cared for.

Lance didn’t deserve to end up like her. He didn’t deserve to end up bloodied and tired and hunted, as he’d been in the final vision. Meri had a hard time justifying a course of action that would bring anyone to that point, but certainly not a little boy with a laugh like the sun itself had taken root inside his soul.

Meri sat on a bench, staring at the misshapen sculpture with unseeing eyes. She’d managed to keep her doubts at bay so far, but suddenly she didn’t have the strength. Zarkon was still out there, if the vision was to be believed. Maybe he’d put himself in stasis, as Meri and Allura and Coran had. Maybe he’d worked some forgotten magic on himself. Maybe it wasn’t the Zarkon Meri knew at all, but some distant descendant of his who’d taken the same name.

Either way, Zarkon’s influence hadn’t faded in the last ten thousand years. He and his army were still out there. They would still be hunting Voltron. They’d conquered hundreds of planets just in the small sliver of the universe Meri could see on Blue’s scanners, and she had no way of knowing whether there was anything left of those people to save.

How could any of them make a difference? Meri, the failed paladin. Lance, the little boy. Blue, the right leg of Voltron, who didn’t even have a proper pilot anymore.

“Are you okay?”

Meri’s breath caught in her throat as she looked up—and found Lance standing in front of her, his hands tugging at the ties on his shorts, his toes scuffing the path underfoot.

Heart pounding, Meri looked past him, wondering if his mother had noticed Meri’s presence. Wondering what she would think if she hadn’t and she found her son talking with a stranger in a secluded corner of the park.

“Hi,” Meri said, managing a smile that did nothing to cover the tremor in her voice or the way her tongue tripped over the unfamiliar language. “Where’s your mom?”

Lance glanced over his shoulder, then back at Meri. “I saw you. At my house. You looked sad.” He hesitated. “Why are you sad?”

“Sad? I’m not sad.” She stood, held out a hand, and turned Lance back toward the playground. “Come on. Let’s find your mom.”

Lance said nothing and allowed himself to be pulled along, but his feet dragged, and he hardly looked up as his mother rushed into view around the bend in the path, Mateo cradled in her arms, her eyes wide with fright.

“Alejandro!” she cried, veering toward them. “Mijo, you scared me.”

“’m sorry, mamá,” Lance muttered.

His mother glanced up at Meri, gratitude in her eyes. “Thank you. I looked away for one second to find his brother’s pacifier.” She gestured at the fussy infant, and something about the gesture seemed guilty and apologetic, as though the woman felt the need to justify herself to a stranger. She had a heavy accent, one Meri had encountered often on the streets of Carlsbad but only occasionally in the movies she’d brought back to watch with Blue. It took an extra moment for Meri to process what the woman was saying, and by the time she formulated a response, the woman’s attention was back on Lance. “Why’d you run off like that, cariño? I didn’t know where you’d gone.”

Lance’s eyes returned to Meri, big and blue and full of a sympathy that brought a lump to Meri’s throat. “She’s sad,” he said. For a moment, he looked like he wanted to say something more, to explain his assertion, perhaps. Then he huffed and stared at the ground. “I wanted to help.”

Meri crouched beside him, the pain in her chest catching her off-guard. “You are a sweet little boy,” she said, faltering as the words she wanted slipped away from her. “But you don’t need to worry about me.”

Lance pursed his lips, crossing his arms over his chest. “That’s what _everyone_ says.”

Chuckling, Meri reached out and ruffled his hair, which made him giggle, his pout dissolving as he wriggled out of her reach. He looked up at his mother expectantly, and she sighed.

“Go on,” she said. “You can play a little while longer.”

Lance cheered and ran off back toward the playground, his mother trailing behind. She gave Meri a look like she expected her to follow, so Meri fell awkwardly into step.

“You aren’t from here, are you?”

“Is it so obvious?” Meri asked, grimacing. She sighed, lifting her hair off the back of her neck to let the breeze reach her skin. “I just moved. I’m still learning the language.”

Lance’s mother smiled sympathetically. “I’ve been here ten years and I’m still learning,” she admitted. She hesitated a moment, then held out her hand for a handshake—a local greeting, as Meri had learned (not without a few embarrassments along the way.) “Rosario.”

“M--” Meri stopped herself, panic clawing at her throat. Her name was, evidently, not far off from a common human name—sometimes spelled Mary, occasionally María. No one had yet blinked when she’d introduced herself by name, but something stopped her from giving it now. She supposed the memory of Altea burning was too fresh in her mind—all the fresher with the next blue paladin hopping from one plastic platform to another just up ahead. Maybe the Galra weren’t here yet, but if they came, if Zarkon really was still alive, and if he realized she was here, then he would hunt her down.

She cast about for a false name—something human, something that wouldn’t stand out. Her mind latched onto the name on a building she’d seen earlier in the day. _Iglesia Católica Santa María Magdalena._

“Magdalena,” she said, smiling wanly.

Rosario’s eyes lit up. “Magdalena! Pues, ¿habla español?”

Meri’s smile wavered. “Oh, ah. No, sorry. My family… traveled. I grew up in, um, Germany.” She laughed weakly, praying Rosario wouldn’t see through her lie. She didn’t immediately comment on it, and Meri hastened the conversation along. “You have a wonderful son.”

“He is something, isn’t he?” Rosario laughed, watching Lance weave down the line of swings. “That’s not the first time he’s done that, either. _Mamá, that person is sad. Can’t we help them?_ It’s exhausting sometimes, but I’m not going to tell him to stop caring.”

“No,” Meri said, her eyes glued to Lance’s small, gleeful form. “No, the world needs more people like him. You must be proud.”

“I am.” Rosario paused, and though Meri kept her eyes on Lance, she could feel the other woman watching her. “So,” she said at length. “Was he right?”

Meri turned. “What?”

“My son. He’s not always right about someone being sad, but… he’s wrong less often than you would think.” Her eyes met Meri’s for an instant before turning back to Lance. “Bad day?”

“Bad year,” Meri said. She worried her lip for a long moment, resisting the words that seemed to be clawing their way out. “I lost my parents a few months ago, and with the… the moving… I—I don’t have a lot of friends close.”

Rosario’s face crumpled, and she placed a hand on Meri’s arm. “I’m sorry.”

Meri lifted her shoulder in a shrug. “It’s not your fault.”

“I know. Still… What do you say we have a girl’s day tomorrow? Meet up for coffee, maybe get a manicure? I could use a day off from the little ones, and it sounds like you could use the company. If you’re not doing anything?”

For several seconds, Meri couldn’t formulate a reply. Her heart seemed to have lodged in her throat, and all she could think was, _You wouldn’t be treating me like this if you knew I wanted to take your son off to war._

But Rosario’s smile was steady and warm, her hand squeezing Meri’s wrist gently, and Meri—Meri _could_ use the company. Blue was wonderful, but things did get a little lonely out there in the caverns.

So Meri smiled, laying her free hand atop Rosario’s. “Thank you. I’d like that.”

All too soon, it was time for Lance and Rosario to go. Rosa called her son over, and he left the playground at once, albeit with a sad glance back toward the swings.

“Say goodbye to Magdalena, mijo.”

“Bye, Mag’lena,” Lance said. “Maga-lena. Mag...” He frowned, stumbling over her name a few more times before giving up with a huff.

Meri laughed, crouching to be on his level. “Lena,” she said.

Lance looked up at her through his shaggy brown bangs and flashed a toothy grin. “Bye, Lena.” Then he darted forward, throwing his arms around her waist. “I hope you feel better.”

Tears stung her eyes, and she patted his back. “I already do, Lance,” she said, darting a glance toward Rosario, who stood to the side, covering her smile with her hand. “I already do.”


	4. Remember, Remember

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Last time... Meri ventured out into Carlsbad, where she quickly learned the need for tact. After a few months of learning English and searching for the Mendoza house, Meri finally found Lance--and was horrified to realize he's still a child. She followed him and his mother to a park, where she got to talking with Lance's mother, Rosario, and the two struck up a friendship.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *slides in late with five new projects because of season 3* haha.... The next chapter's gonna be probably a week, a week and a half away, friends. Sorry, but I accidentally stumbled into a 30k+ post-season 3 fic idea for Shatt Week that just had to be done. I'll get back to the rest of this fic as soon as I possibly can.
> 
> Also! Happy 1st Birthday to Voltron: Duality! Come say hi on my tumblr [@squirenonny](http://squirenonny.tumblr.com)

Meri’s next acquisition was a cell phone—the Earth equivalent of comms, smashed together with a simple computer and a huge library of games. It was a neat little device, really. Not spectacular, after the tech she’d grown up with, but it gave her a way to practice reading English, to keep up on local news, to “Google” random facts any human would know innately, and—most importantly—a way to stay in touch with Rosario.

The first “girls' day” turned into a full six hours of easy conversation, first over coffee, then at a manicurist’s, and finally back at Rosario’s house, Lance playing video games in the other room while Rosario introduced Meri to her husband, Ramon. They were both incredibly patient with Meri’s fumbling attempts at English, as both of them were native Spanish speakers. Ramon had learned English early, Rosario only a few years before she had Lance, but both knew the frustration of trying to make themself understood in a language that didn’t quite fit.

Rosa, only a few years older than Meri’s professed twenty-one, was every bit the charmer her son was, drawing smiles out of everyone she met—even Meri, even on her worst days. It was hard not to think of the visions she’d had of an older Lance, especially the last, with the blood running down his side and the steel conviction in his eyes. But if anyone could make Meri forget the future, it was Rosario, whose witty humor reminded Meri in some ways of Lealle.

One afternoon became a weekly meetup, which turned into regular dinners with the whole Mendoza family. And then, without Meri comprehending exactly how it had happened, they were genuine friends.

Well. Genuine in the sense that they both sincerely enjoyed spending time together.

Less genuine was the increasingly complex web of lies Meri found herself weaving. She didn’t know when she’d decided not to tell Rosario the truth, but she knew—she _knew—_ that their friendship would not survive that conversation, and Meri had precious little to hold onto here on this strange alien world.

Besides, it would be twelve more years before Lance came of age, and Meri had already decided not to introduce him to Blue or to the war that raged beyond his stars until he was an adult by his people’s laws.

So she built up the facade of Magdalena Fischer, whose father had been a businessman in Germany that fell in love with one of the locals on a business trip to a small town in Spain called Altea. It was an odd little coincidence, that Spanish seaside town, but it made Meri smile to be able to tell Rosario and Ramon that she would always be an Altean, even if Magdalena had grown up in Germany with only her mother’s stories of fairy-tale castles and beautiful princesses to tie her to the place of her birth.

After the phone, Meri got herself an apartment in Carlsbad and furnished it as cheaply as she could. She did a bit of research, then decided that Magdalena worked nights at a local supermarket, took classes during the day at Carlsbad Community College, and studied English in between. She didn’t buy a car yet, but she did procure a bus pass, and she spent the better part of three days familiarizing herself with Carlsbad public transit.

She saw Lance once a week or so, often only in passing as she sat with his parents and he ran off in search of more entertaining engagements. Sometimes she caught him watching her as though he could sense the ties of fate that connected them through Blue. She told him stories of her childhood, carefully couched in the language of fantasy, and one time he deigned to show her his favorite video game—and he only laughed a little when she proved inept.

He wasn’t always there to say goodbye when she left, but sometimes—on days when the loss of her home and her friends weighed on her, but also on days when she was merely tired—he would catch her off-guard with a hug and a smile, and sometimes a gift. A flower picked from his backyard. A toy car only as long as her finger. A picture he’d drawn of Altea—the Altea of Meri’s stories, which wasn’t quite home and wasn’t quite the human town across the sea. Meri saved each gift, carrying it back to Blue and telling her all about the kind, clever boy she’d picked for herself.

Eventually school started up, and Meri saw Lance less often—but she still spent enough time with his family that when, a year after Meri emerged from stasis, Lance’s new babysitter canceled on Rosario and Ramon’s date night, Rosa turned to Meri.

“I’m so, _so_ sorry, Lena,” she said in a rush. Her accent was thicker than usual, as it tended to be when she was under pressure, and it took a little extra mental effort to follow her rushed explanation. “I know this is last minute, and _please_ don’t feel like you have to change your plans for me. We can do this some other time. I just thought I’d check—we never had this problem with Sarah, I swear. Darn her for going off to college, no? Anyway--”

“Rosa,” Meri said, laughing. “It’s fine. I don’t have plans for tonight, anyway.”

“Really?”

Meri glanced around the inside of Blue’s cockpit at the mountains of books about Earth’s space programs she’d bought. It was proving to be headache-inducing work, but it was the best chance she had, at the moment, to find out whether or not humans had come far enough in the last ten millennia to attract Zarkon’s attention. “What time should I be there?”

* * *

“Lena, you are a _saint._ ”

Meri laughed, hurrying inside and closing the door before Lance, Mateo, or the family cat made a break for it. Rosario was halfway through her preparations for date night: she had on a cute blue dress, and her hair was done up in a complex braided style, but she still wore jeans and fuzzy pink socks under her dress, and she kept turning around and sprinting off to find her earrings, to check on Mateo’s supply of baby food and snacks, to see if Ramon was almost ready.

Lance came waddling into the room, half carrying Mateo. Mateo had recently started walking on his own—a fact Meri had heard about at some length from Rosario.

Rosa clucked now, set her earrings down, and went to rescue Mateo from his brother.

“I was _helping_ ,” Lance protested, and Meri ducked her head under the pretense of untying her shoes so that Lance wouldn’t see her smile.

“If he doesn’t want to walk,” Rosario said, “then he doesn’t want to walk, _cariño_. You shouldn’t force him.”

Lance huffed, but mumbled his assent before he sprinted across the room and jumped onto the couch by the door. He leaned his arms on the couch and watched Meri tug off her second shoe.

“Where’s Jenny?”

“I told you,” Rosario said, going back for her earrings. “Jenny couldn’t make it.”

“Oh.” Lance picked at a band-aid on his arm that was beginning to come unstuck. “That’s okay. She was boring.”

Rosario turned, puckering her lips. The smile she didn’t want to show pulled at the corners of her eyes. “Alejandro!”

Lance ducked his head. “’s true,” he grumbled.

“It’s also not a nice thing to say.”

Pouting, Lance turned around sank down on the couch.

Meri reached out to ruffle his hair. “It’s not Jenny’s fault. Babysitters are _supposed_ to be boring. It’s all _eat your vegetables, take your bath, go to bed._ ” Meri waggled her finger, doing her best to make her face look stern.

“Sarah wasn’t like that,” Lance said.

Dropping her voice low, Meri cupped her hand around her mouth and whispered, “That’s why she went away, you know. She was breaking all the rules, so the babysitter fairies poofed her away.”

Lance stifled a giggle. “That’s not a thing.”

“What, babysitter fairies? Sure they are.”

“Nuh-uh. And they didn’t poof her. She went to college.”

“Ah, but do you know what college is?” Meri grinned as Lance opened his mouth to answer, then hesitated. “College,” she said, “is the place fun babysitters go to learn how to be boring and responsible.”

“Do _you_ have to go to college?”

“Oh, yes,” Meri said gravely. She craned her neck to look at the hallway Rosario had disappeared down, then leaned in close to Lance, pressing her finger to her lips. “Don’t tell anyone, but they haven’t sucked the fun out of me yet.”

Lance’s eyes danced with silent laughter as he pressed a finger to his own lips. “I won’t tell,” he promised.

“Good,” Meri said. Rosario walked back into the room, and Meri hastily straightened up. “Now where are your vegetables?”

Rosario smiled at Meri as Lance turned his face into a pillow and laughed, Mateo crawling over and pulling himself upright on the couch cushions.

“If you need anything, just call,” Rosa said earnestly. “I know my boys can be a bit of a handful. If it’s too much, just say the word and we’ll come to the rescue.”

Meri took her by the shoulders before she could talk herself into canceling date night, just to be safe. “Rosa. I’ll be fine. _Believe_ me, I’ve handled worse than two little boys before. Go enjoy your evening.”

* * *

Wrangling two human children turned out to be more taxing than Meri had anticipated. They weren’t _terribly_ different from Altean children, but Meri had, as a rule, avoided dealing anyone under the age of fifty without Lealle or Coran bringing actual experience to the table. Meri liked kids. She _did._ It was just that she didn’t know how to reason with them.

The real problem was that humans were so much more fragile than Alteans. No one would have expected someone as small as Mateo to fight, of course—though Lance was fast approaching the stage at which the more energetic Alteans might begin practicing self-defense against a carefully-regulated gladiator bot. But Mateo was still unsteady on his feet, crawling as often as he walked, and his vocabulary seemed limited to half a dozen words, including _mama, papa,_ and _La-la—_ Mateo’s name for Lance.

Even so, Meri would have expected Mateo to have _some_ physical resilience by now. But hardly an hour into the evening, with Lance cheering him on, Mateo staggered across the living room. He lost his balance and fell forward, landing sprawled on the hardwood floor of the kitchen.

The wail that burst out of Mateo’s lungs sent a thrill of terror through Meri, and she leaped to her feet, scanning the floor for some threat she’d failed to notice. A small, sharp piece of scrap metal, or a weapon someone had left lying out.

 _Who’s going to be leaving weapons out?_ Meri berated herself, hurrying forward, only to hesitate a few feet short of the screaming toddler. _This isn’t the castle-ship. You’re not at war._

It didn’t matter, anyway. There was no weapon, no obvious reason at all for Mateo’s distress. He wasn’t even bleeding, though he was red-faced from the force of his screams.

What the quiznak was she supposed to _do_?

It was pathetic, really. She’d trained for years to be a paladin, to keep her head under pressure. She could organize an evacuation or charge into an enemy stronghold. But one screaming child rendered her useless. By the _ancients._ Rosa was never going to trust Meri with her children again.

Before Meri could decide whether it would be worse to ruin Rosario’s evening or to take an impromptu trip to the emergency room, Lance was there. He dropped to his knees beside Mateo, reaching out to pat his back.

“You fell!” Lance said in a tone Meri thought more appropriate to Mateo dropping a toy—sympathetic, but not especially concerned. “Did you get an owie?”

Mateo whimpered, staring up at Lance with big, wet eyes. He’d stopped screaming, but his breath still came in uneven, hiccuping gasps. Meri, still frozen two steps away, could only watch as Lance helped Mateo sit up.

“Where’s the owie, Mateo? Can you show me?”

Mateo whined again, his face scrunching up in concentration. He huffed, his breath leveling out. Lance sat back on his heels.

“Owie,” Mateo said, as though it were some great insight.

“Yeah, owie. Where’s the owie?” Lance paused, raising a single finger. “Is it… _here_?” He poked Mateo in the side, eliciting a single, startled giggle. Lance smiled toothily. “Or… _here_?” His hand darted up, fingers ghosting along the bottom of Mateo’s chubby chin. Mateo squealed, squirming away from Lance’s touch.

“La-la!” he shrieked.

Lance’s grin widened, and he rocked forward onto hands and knees to poke Mateo again in the stomach, then to grab his foot and tickle the sole.

“La-la, no!” Mateo said between giggles. Then, as Lance reached out with both hands, Mateo rolled himself over and shot off at a crawl, his laughter bouncing in time with his lurching gait.

Lance sat back, clearly pleased with himself, and Meri finally started breathing again. She looked down at the top of Lance’s head as he stood and followed after his brother. Blue, she had to admit, knew her paladins.

 _I hope your team knows how lucky they're going to be to have you, Lance_.

* * *

Meri would say this: Lance and Mateo knew how to keep her on her toes. She hardly had time to think, between getting both boys dinner, giving them a bath, and putting Mateo down to sleep. If not for Lance, Meri didn’t know how she would have managed.

“A few more years and you’ll be doing this all by yourself,” she said, pulling Lance into her lap as they sat down to watch the end of the movie they’d put on after dinner. Lance was starting to drift, but he’d assured her he could stay up for the end.

He smiled through a yawn and leaned his head against Meri’s shoulder as the music swelled. “Are you gonna tell me a story?”

“A story?”

Lance nodded. “Sarah always told me a bedtime story after she tucked me in. Jenny didn’t.”

“And Jenny was boring,” Meri said, chuckling. “All right. Let’s finish the movie, and then I’ll tell you a story.”

Meri wracked her brain for a story she could tell that would make sense to someone who hadn’t grown up in outer space, hearing the folklore of a hundred cultures. The last year had just about exhausted her easily generalized stories of Altea, and she didn’t trust her grasp of Earth customs and creatures enough to try swapping unfamiliar terms for things Lance might recognize.

The movie was over too soon, and Meri carried a drowsy Lance into his bedroom, where she got him settled before taking a seat on the edge of his bed.

“Have you ever heard the story of the guardian of Altea?”

Lance shook his head. “What’s that?”

“A story my mother used to tell me. You see, Altea has always been a peaceful place, but the rest of the world didn’t always want it to be. A long time ago, hundreds and hundreds of years ago, way before any of us was born, there were monsters in the nighttime. Monsters that liked to attack Altea. Monsters that didn’t want us to be happy.”

Old aches suddenly reared their heads, creeping vines that coiled around Meri’s throat and strangled her story. _Monsters._ She could think of no better word to describe Zarkon and his army, and yet it wasn’t strong enough by half to describe what had happened.

A year later, from Meri’s perspective, and it was still as fresh in her mind as the day it had happened. The blood on the floor, the smoke in the air. The weight on Alfor’s shoulders and the contempt in Zarkon’s voice. Monsters, she’d learned, didn’t come quietly in the night. They came in full daylight, arrogant in their self-righteousness, and they smashed through every good and true thing that stood against them.

“Lena?” Lance asked in a small voice.

Meri snapped out of her memories, blinking away tears as she looked down at him, his eyes open wide. He pushed himself up on his elbows.

Laughing weakly, Meri scrubbed at her face. “Sorry,” she said. “Where was I?”

“A story your mom told you,” Lance said. His fingers traced the constellations on his comforter, his eyes not rising to meet hers. “Mama said your mom and dad are gone.”

Meri breathed in and out. “They are,” she said.

“Do you miss them?”

“All the time.”

Lance nodded, not surprised. His hands stilled on his blanket, and his shoulders crept towards his ears. In a single motion, he tossed off his blanket and his sheet, scrambled forward, and wrapped his arms around Meri’s waist.

“I’m sorry.”

Meri hugged him with one arm, smiling sadly. “It’s not your fault, Lance.”

“I’m still sorry.”

She held him for a moment, squeezing her eyes shut and forcing out the memories of the past. Altea might as well have existed in another lifetime. Altea, Voltron, and Meri the paladin. Now she was Lena, and Voltron was just a bedtime story to tell a little boy.

Breathing deeply, Meri pulled away from Lance and placed a hand atop her head. “Thank you,” she said. “But I was telling you a story.”

“You don’t need to,” Lance said, even as he crawled back toward his pillow. “You don’t have to be sad for me.”

Meri’s smile, this time, came easier, and she pulled Lance’s blankets up to his chin. “Well, then. I guess I’ll just have to make sure this story cheers us both up, won’t I?”

Lance was obviously trying not to show his enthusiasm, but there was no mistaking the way his eyes lit up. So, shoving her own complicated nest of issues aside, Meri began her story again. She’d seen enough children’s movies and heard enough fairy tales to know how to make it all sound like a fantasy, and that extra step of removal kept her from getting lost once more in the memories as she told Lance about the planet he’d never see.

“Once upon a time,” she said, smoothing the blanket across his shoulders, “there was a place called Altea, and the people who lived there were called Alteans.”

“And your mom was an Altean?”

Meri nodded.

“Does that mean _you’re_ an Altean?”

“I am,” Meri said. “But my parents had already left Altea to buy and sell from other peoples by the time I was born, so I don’t remember Altea very well. But I’ve seen pictures, and I’ve heard stories—stories like this one, about the Guardian of Altea. You see, there were terrible monsters living just outside Altea. Horrible creatures and wicked people who wanted to hurt the people of Altea. So Altea built walls around itself to ward off the monsters. For years and years, they didn’t let anyone else in, that’s how scared they were of the monsters around them.

“Then one day the queen of Altea heard that the monsters had attacked another city. This other city didn’t have walls like Altea’s walls, so they couldn’t keep out the monsters. Altea had an army—a grand, powerful army—and the queen ordered her soldiers to go and help this other city. There were some Alteans who didn’t like that. They were afraid that without the army, Altea wouldn’t be able to turn away monsters who attacked at home.”

“But they went,” Lance said, propping himself up on his elbows once more. “Right? They didn’t let the people in the other city get hurt?”

“No,” Meri said. “The queen was right, and most people agreed with her, even if they were scared. The army hurried off to this other city, and together the two peoples drove back the monsters. But then a little while later, the monsters attacked _another_ city, and then another. Altea gathered up the soldiers from the other cities and rode out to face the monsters, and they drove them back again and again.

“And then the monsters _did_ attack Altea.”

“Oh, no!” Lance sat upright in bed, hugging his knees to his chest and leaning forward, as if he could will the people of Altea to victory. “Were the Alteans okay?”

“It was a hard battle,” said Meri, smoothing Lance’s hair back from his face. “But they won, and the monsters retreated. The advisers who had argued against helping the other cities came forward and begged the queen to bring the armies home. _My queen,_ one adviser said. _Your people need protection, too. Why help everyone else and leave your own people to suffer?_ The queen was sad, because she knew it was her duty to protect Altea, but she didn’t want to abandon the other cities.

“So she went out into the wilderness around Altea, all by herself. She didn’t take her guards along, or her advisers. She went, and she sought out five _kotha--”_

Lance tilted his head to the side. “Five _what_?”

Meri hesitated, snatching her hand back as she reminded herself that this was _not_ Altea and she could _not_ just drop the names of creatures that—so far as Lance knew—didn’t even exist. “ _Kotha_ ,” she said, cringing as she recognized her own accent in the word. She’d been slowly losing the accent as she learned English, but it back now in full force, wrapping around the word and making it sound painfully out of place. “They...they were large creatures that lived around Altea. They’ve got four legs and round ears, and long tails, and they purr--”

“Like a cat?”

“I… suppose. Yes.” Meri wrinkled her nose. “But bigger—as big as me—and all sorts of colors. Blue and green and red and--”

“And striped?”

“Uh… no.”

Lance tossed back his sheets and scrambled to the bookshelf across his room. He pulled down a stuffed animal she'd seen a few times before. It's resemblance to kotha had struck her as remarkable, and Lance had seemed morally offended when she'd never heard of Nala, or of a movie called _The Lion King._

“Do the kotha look like this?” Lance asked, staring up at her.

"...Yeah," Meri said. "I suppose they do."

Lance nodded once, firmly. He set the lion beside his pillow, then crawled back under the covers. “So the queen of Altea went out and found five lions,” he said.

Meri’s mouth worked soundlessly for a moment as she considered correcting him, but it was probably for the best that she not get too deep into extraterrestrial knowledge just yet. So she nodded, tugging the blankets back up to Lance’s chin.

“So the queen found five lions,” she echoed. “And she told them about the monsters, and about the other cities, and she asked if they would help her protect people—not just her people, but all the people—from the terrible creatures and the wicked men.

“And they said yes.”

* * *

It was late when Meri finally made it back to the cave where she’d left Blue. She stared up at Blue’s head, superimposing the image of Lance's lion plushie. It wasn’t a terrible likeness, all things considered.

Blue was waiting for her in the cockpit, a string of questions already blinking on the screens. Seeing them, Meri laughed.

“One at a time, gorgeous, come on,” she said, dropping into the chair.

The questions disappeared, and Blue rumbled as Meri opened a bottle of soda. _How is he?_

“Cute as a button,” Meri said, taking a long drink of soda. “Super helpful, too. I’m pretty sure he did more to take care of Mateo than I did.”

Blue rumbled that that, and Meri didn’t need the bond to feel her pride.

_When can I meet him?_

Meri’s smile faltered. “Blue, he’s… he’s still pretty small. I told you, it’s going to be years before he’s old enough to fight.”

_But I can meet him._

“I can’t bring a kid all the way out here. What would I tell Rosario?”

_The truth?_

“Oh, yeah. That’d go over well. ‘Hey, Rosa, just taking your kid out to the desert on a field trip to meet the giant sentient robot he’s gonna fly into battle someday. We’ll be back before his bedtime!’”

Blue shifted, letting out something like a huff. _Fine. Tell me about him?_

The question was accompanied with a plaintive whine, almost a plea, and Meri couldn’t have said no if she wanted to. She told Blue all about the evening, from Lance’s complaints about his last babysitter to Mateo’s fall to the story Meri had told about the founding of Voltron.

 _Lion?_ Blue asked when Meri reached that part of the story. _What is ‘lion’?_

Meri paused to fish out her phone. She had terrible reception this deep in the canyons, but Blue had found a way to boost the signal, at least while Meri was in the cockpit, so she had decent data. She googled a picture of a lion, then forwarded it to Blue’s comms network.

The cockpit shifted slightly as Blue tilted her head to one side.

_It’s… small._

Meri chuckled. “Yeah, well, it’s the closest they get on Earth to describing you, so...” She shrugged, her smile tugging wider. “Besides. Lance seems to like lions. Fell asleep hugging a lion toy, actually. And he told me we had to watch something called the _Lion King_ the next time I babysat.”

The glow inside the cockpit brightened momentarily, a purr rattling Meri’s teeth. She laughed, then choked as a window opened up on the viewscreen, text scrolling across it. A confirmation flashed blue, and Meri dropped her feet to the floor.

“Did you just—was that--?” She pulled up the universal translator and called up the entry for _kotha_. “You _manually edited_ the translator database?” Meri cried, biting down on a shriek of delight. “Blue!”

 _I am the Blue Lion,_ Blue typed out in English. Then she purred again. _You should buy the Kotha King movie tomorrow. I want to see it._

“I’ll do that,” Meri said. She downed the last of her soda, tossed the bottle aside, then headed off toward the cot in the corner. _Lance,_ she thought, _you have no idea how much Blue’s gonna be wrapped around your little finger._

She couldn’t wait for them to meet.


	5. She Shall Have Music

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Last time... Meri's friendship with Lance's parents, Rosario and Ramon, continues to deepen, and Meri volunteered to fill in when the usual babysitter cancelled. Thank god for Lance's help, because it turns out Meri doesn't actually know as much about human children as she thought. She ended up telling Lance a fanciful version of the origin of Voltron, which led to Lance comparing the five robots to lions and Blue making the translation official.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> /slides in after a month with the new chapter. Heyyyyy friends, sorry about the wait. A coupla fics came in and stole my life for a while there. One of them's up now ([the Shatt Week fic I mentioned last time](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11785851/chapters/26577345) that turned out to be over 40k and at least 70% Kuron-centric because season 3 feels hit me _hard_ ). The other is my horror bang fic that ended up at three times the minimum word count because hnnnngh. Stay tuned for more details about that as the posting date gets closer.
> 
> Anyway, I'm back with another chapter of Meri feels. The final chapter should be up before the end of the week; it's already half written. Thanks, as always, for your patience!

“Val, come _on!_ ”

“It’s hot, Lance.”

“So?”

Meri smothered a smile as she glanced over to where Lance crouched beside his cousin. Val was fourteen, her lanky limbs made longer by short shorts and an orange tank top, her curly brown hair piled atop her head in a messy bun. She sat in the shadow of the house, tongue poking out between her lips as she focused on the handheld gaming device in her hands. Five years had caught Meri up on a lot of Earth culture, and Lance, now ten, had his own small collection of video games, but Meri’s knowledge of gaming consoles and companies was spotty at best. At least she’d figured out how to tell the difference between a game system, a phone, and a calculator (even if the phone did count for all three.)

Lance leaned on Val’s shoulder, peering at the screen. He seemed unaffected by the summer heat, much like Mateo, who was already out in the full sun, sprinting back and forth across the backyard swinging a foam sword.

“Come _on_ , Lance! Hurry _up!_ I thought we were playing space rangers!”

“Space _fighters_ ,” Lance corrected. “And we need _Val_ if we’re gonna defeat Barf Crater.”

Val looked up from her game long enough to arch an eyebrow at Lance, who grinned. “Barf Crater?”

“Copyright law, Val,” Lance said, very seriously. “I’m not taking any chances.”

And, oh, that was smart of him. Meri turned back to Luz, helping the toddler build a very clumsy attempt at a sand castle in the sandbox. It was Val who had told Lance about copyright law, of course, and if Meri knew Val at all, the flattery of actually remembering that conversation would get Lance everywhere.

Sure enough, Val heaved a sigh, shut her handheld with a _snap_ , and let a cheering Lance pull her to her feet.

“All right, all right,” she said, stretching. “I’ll help you take down your Sith knock-off. Jeez.”

For all her complaining, Val was rather enthusiastic once she joined in on the game. It was funny, Meri thought, how something that had started as a clumsy attempt to analyze Lance’s personality and priorities had taken on a life of its own. She rarely participated these days, mostly out of a severe case of second-hand embarrassment—she hadn’t exactly been _subtle_ in the digs she’d taken at Zarkon early on, often regurgitating things he’d actually said to her in training but with a nasally cartoon villain voice. (She’d picked up quite a few of those in her rabid consumption of kids’ movies.)

It was rather therapeutic, really.

“You know something, Luz?” Meri asked, accepting the blue plastic shovel the girl offered her. “There’s going to come a day when I finally tell your brother everything and he’s going to look me in the eye and _judge_.”

Luz looked up at her, blinking owlishly. She seemed confused by Meri’s words, but didn’t know how to ask what she wanted to know. Which was probably for the best.

Meri smiled, missing the days when she could talk to Lance without worrying that he’d put the pieces together before she meant him to. “Don’t worry about it,” she said, swinging her leg over the rim of the sandbox so she had better access to the mounds of sand Meri thought were supposed to be a city. Or maybe Luz just liked piling up sand.

Shouts and whoops of laughter kept drawing her eye to the grass and trees that had become Lance’s battlefield. He took the lead today, as he did in most things. There was something to be said about being charismatic and having more energy than anyone else in the room. Too much energy, some said. Meri knew it had been causing trouble in school, where Lance had trouble regulating his attention. ADHD, Rosario had called it. He’d been diagnosed last year, and Meri had spent considerable time since then looking into what that meant and how she could adapt the usual paladin training to better suit him.

It was slow going, as Meri wasn’t a psychologist. Altea, honestly, hadn’t been a paragon of mental health awareness, and Meri had known less than most people. Oh, she’d seen battle shock—PTSD, humans would call it—in some of her friends on the castle-ship. She’d heard of depression. But the rest? Meri honestly didn’t know whether or not her people had had a concept of things like ADHD. She didn’t even know whether it was possible for Alteans to _have_ ADHD.

The day Rosario had told her about Lance’s diagnosis, after a few hours of scouring the internet for information, Meri had returned to Blue’s cavern. She did that less often these days; her life as Lena and her secondary identity—a reporter named Sarah Wimbledon, who _actually_ had a job, even if it was just an excuse for Meri to question people she couldn’t otherwise talk to about subjects she otherwise didn’t know how to bring up—took up too much time for her to make the hours-long drive out to the canyons every day.

But she’d needed it that day. She was just one person, with no experience in training new paladins and no _freaking_ clue what she’d gotten herself into. She needed help.

She’d need to track down Allura and Coran as soon as possible after she told Lance the truth.

On the battlefield, Lance feigned taking a shot for Mateo, crying out that the evil Dr. Crater had found a sleep ray. It was just a game, and Lance maintained pretend consciousness long enough after his melodramatic collapse to remind Mateo of an antidote they’d apparently found earlier in their adventure, but the display still brought a chill to Meri’s bones. She’d never forgotten the visions she’d seen through Blue. The last, in particular, where she’d seen Lance bloodied and in pain but refusing to hand over… someone. Keith, whoever that was.

She’d turned the vision over in her head time and time again. She’d looked at it from every angle, written down every last detail she could remember, tried to guess at how old Lance was in that scene, _where_ he was, who he was protecting and who it was he fought against. They were Galra, presumably, and they served  Zarkon--or someone they called Zarkon, at least. Anything beyond that was pure speculation.

Feeling sick, Meri refocused on Luz, making a mental note to keep an eye out for self-sacrificing tendencies. Maybe this was all just a game, maybe when it became real he’d be more careful of his own life. She hoped so, but she owed it to Rosario to make sure her son didn’t carry his protectiveness too far.

The game went on for another twenty minutes before Lance climbed a tree to “get a bee on the evil Doctor” with his imaginary tranquilizer gun. Meanwhile Val sweet-talked Crater to keep his attention off Mateo, who snuck up behind the shovel driven into the ground they’d designated their target. Mateo tossed a dingy blue towel over the shovel (or, tried to; it slipped off almost immediately), Lance called out for the other two to clear out, and then he fired with a loud, cartoony, "Pow!"

Val obligingly toppled the shovel, and the other two cheered their victory.

Lance clambered down the tree as Val rolled her eyes but smiled fondly, and then, as though suddenly struck with inspiration, he ran over to Meri. “Lena! Lena, can we go to the park?”

* * *

The park at the end of the block—the same one where Meri had first met Rosario five years ago—was a favorite gathering place for the neighborhood, especially now that summer had rolled around. There were two other families with young kids gathered around the playground, a woman jogging the path with her dog, and a ring of teenagers sprawled on the grass by the sculpture. (It was not, as Meri had first thought, a fish, but rather the artist’s interpretation of “A Summer’s Day.”)

Meri didn’t get impressionism, and she wasn’t sure if that was a cultural disconnect or personal taste; they hadn’t had art like this on Altea.

Mateo took off at a sprint as soon as Meri released his hand, but Lance held himself to Luz’s pace, leading her away from the flailing limbs and deafening shrieks of the larger play structure. They went instead to the line of colorful spring riders by the smaller structure, where fire poles and monkey bars were swapped out for crawl tunnels and an oversized tic-tac-toe board. With a helpful boost from Lance, Luz scrambled onto a plastic lion—a family favorite, ironically enough, since long before Meri came along.

Meri herself took a seat on a nearby bench, where she could keep an eye on all three of her charges. Val joined her, eyes glued once more to her game.

“Not a fan of jungle gyms?” Meri asked.

Val shrugged. “When I was a kid, sure. I’m a little too big for that now, don’t you think?”

“I suppose. But then, why did you come? You could have stayed inside, where it’s cooler.”

Val swiped at a loose curl as though Meri’s words had reminded her of the heat. Meri had once asked her why she didn’t cut her hair, considering the New Mexico heat.

 _Why don’t you?_ Val had shot back. Meri didn’t have an answer for that—not one she could share, at any rate. She’d let her Lena shift’s hair grow out, initially, as a way to see how far she could modify her appearance. That had been back when she was first trying to craft a second, unique human shift—something that was supposed to be impossible. Meri supposed no one else had hit on the right combination of boredom, solitude, and desperation that let her work for months on end at a futile task. Or maybe someone _had_ discovered the secret, but they’d declined to pass it along. She could see the draw in that—especially if the others who had done this had used it for espionage.

Not that _she_ was planning on turning into a spy. Just… she could appreciate the practical application of this trick she’d taught herself.

Now, of course, Sarah Wimbledon was a well-worn persona, so there was no real need to keep experimenting with Lena’s hair, but it wasn’t much of a hassle, either, not when she could shift it away whenever she wanted. Besides… it kind of reminded her of Allura.

“The whole reason I came over was because I was bored,” Val said, hammering a button with her thumb. “Mom and Dad are at work, and Sebastian’s got camp till next Friday, so there was nothing to do after Jo’s mom dropped me off...”

“And you’re as much a social butterfly as your cousins.”

Val glanced up at the playground, smiling. “Lance and Mateo, anyway. Luz is like Sebastian—rather be off on her own than meet new people. You know how many books my parents  had to bribe my brother with to get him to go to summer camp?"

"A lot?"

Val just shook her head.

Luz was, in fact, perfectly content in her own little corner of the playground with only Lance for company. Two other preschoolers were clambering through tunnels and under low arches, apparently acting out a story as they played, though Meri couldn’t make much sense of it.

It was only about ten minutes before Luz got tired of rocking on the lion and scampered over to Meri and Val, reclaiming the doll she’d brought along and sitting down beside the bench to play. Lance ran off to join Mateo, racing him around the playground and helping him (carrying him) across the monkey bars.

Five minutes after _that_ , Lance had attracted every kid on the playground with a boast that he could climb to the top of the nearby cottonwood tree. He preened under the attentive eyes of half a dozen spectators, then leaped up and caught a low-hanging branch, swinging his legs up into the crook where branch met trunk.

Meri leaned her elbows on the back of the bench and arched an eyebrow at Val, who had snorted at Lance’s antics, but paid him no further mind. “You’re not much of an instigator, are you?”

Val gave her a funny look. “ _You_ never had to babysit me...”

Meri chuckled. “I meant you aren’t the type to go out there and _do_ things just for the sake of doing them. Not like Lance. Speaking of which—Be careful, Alejandro!” She spoke less out of genuine concern—Lance had climbed enough trees over the years for Meri’s anxiety to pack it in—and more because the other parents were all staring at Lance and around the park as though searching for the absentee parent. Lance was already ten feet off the ground, and he showed no signs of slowing.

“I don’t think _anyone’s_ as get-up-and-go as Lance,” Val said.

“Can’t argue with you there.” Meri leaned back on her hands, watching Luz tuck her doll into Meri’s purse, the only cradle-substitute in the area. “You think you ever will? Do something wild, I mean, just to say you’ve done it.”

Val pursed her lips. “I dunno. Depends if it’s worth it.”

“And… what’s worth it?”

“What do _you_ care?”

Meri turned away from Luz. Val had put her game down and was frowning at Meri, her gaze entirely too keen. _Careful_ , Meri told herself. _She might start to figure things out._ Val was a sharp one—just as curious as Lance, but far more dogged in her pursuit of answers. As much as Meri would have liked to have someone besides Blue to talk this over with, Lance’s fourteen-year-old cousin was not at the top of her list.

“Call it idle curiosity,” Meri said with a shrug. “If people tell stories about you someday, what do you want them to say?”

“Nothing.” Val shut her game with a snap, then pulled her feet up on the bench and turned sideways to face Meri. “I’d rather be the one telling other people’s stories, honestly.”

“Oh?”

“The world is full of stories that aren’t being told. Why add mine to the mix when I could spend my time making sure people hear the ones that really matter?”

Meri frowned. “Yours doesn’t matter?”

“I don’t think I _have_ one. Not really.”

“Everyone has a story, Val. That’s part of living.”

Val cocked her head to the side. “Well, what’s _your_ story, then?”

A condensed version of Meri’s life presented itself to her mind's eye—the hell she’d raised as a kid, her dreams of becoming a paladin. Training under the man who would slaughter her people and the woman who would become his first victim. Watching her home fall apart, racing to help only to flee as people died in the streets.

A laugh escaped her, more bitter than the side of herself she let bleed into Lena for the Mendozas to see. “My story,” she said when Val jumped in surprise, “isn’t exactly the sort of thing you tell on a playground.”

“What does _that_ mean?”

Meri closed her eyes for a moment, then reached out to smooth Luz’s fine curls back from her forehead. “It means I’ve seen a lot of things no one should have to see.”

“Huh.” Val crossed her arms atop her knees and rested her chin where her wrists met. “So how’d you end up babysitting for Tía Rosa and Tío Ramon?”

 _My giant alien robot picked their kid to fight in a war._ “A little bit of panic and a _whole_ lot of luck.”

That made Val laugh, which was about as much as Meri could hope for. “Maybe I should be telling _your_ story.”

“Maybe,” Meri allowed, refusing to let her heartache show on her face. “But not today.”


	6. Red Sky at Morning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Last time... Meri continued to watch Lance, taking notes of his inclinations and preparing for the day she begins his training. In the meantime, she had a talk with Val about stories worth telling.

“Have you ever heard of the Galaxy Garrison?”

A spike of alarm shot through Meri at Lance’s question, and she spun away from the stove, where she had a pot of macaroni cooking. It had been some time since Rosario had asked her to babysit the kids, especially now that Lance was thirteen and fully capable of watching eight- and six-year-olds on his own. Meri still got together with Rosa and Ramon, of course, and she saw the kids from time to time. Lance still greeted her at the door with a running hug, and Meri still allowed herself to stumble—Lance had pouted for a good ten minutes the first time he tried to tackle her and found her immovable, and she’d since learned to downplay her Altean strength.

It was only chance that had her babysitting today, the very day she accepted a position at the Galaxy Garrison. (Why _was_ Lance asking about the Garrison, of all places?)

“That’s the military base out in the desert?” Meri asked, feigning ignorance. As if there was any chance she could _not_ know about Iverson and his people. They’d been no one of importance until last year, just an academy and an administrative building outside Carlsbad.

Then they’d acquired several thousand acres of surrounding scrub brush and canyons—up to and including the caverns where the Blue Lion slept.

Lance dropped his bag beside the kitchen table. He’d been at a friend’s house working on a school project all afternoon, which was why Meri had been called in to keep tabs on Luz and Mateo, and Meri honestly wasn’t surprised that Lance had just-so-happened to arrive five minutes before dinner. The kid would eat an entire yelmore if she let him. And… if there were one available. Quiznak. Eight local years on this planet and her brain still went to yelmores before _cows._

“That’s the one,” Lance said. “We had some people come to the school today and tell us about the program. Did you know I could be flying an actual space ship this time next year?!”

Meri arched an eyebrow at him. “ _Actual_ space ships? Or simulators?”

Lance waggled a hand at her. “Same thing. _Lena._ I could go to _space_.”

 _Well, you’re going to do that anyway,_ Meri thought wryly. “That does sound cool...”

“ _Right?_ ” Lance dropped into the chair, flopping forward so his arms splayed out across the table, reaching toward Meri. “Only thing is I’d have to pass the entrance exams.”

Meri stared at the macaroni for a long moment, the words caught in her throat. She’d been to the Garrison a few times now, first under a burner identity on visitation day to see how the place was run, then as Naomi Smith (she’d had to resist the temptation not to say screw it and write down Smythe—a closer approximation to Coran’s name, but also not exactly a name that blended in.)

Commander Mitch Iverson, the man in charge of the base, was a cold, calculating bastard with too many secrets for Meri to be truly comfortable around him, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that those secrets weren’t fully terrestrial in origin. Not that she was ready to make a move yet—not by a longshot. She had no proof at all except for the uncomfortable coincidence of the land grab. (But it _couldn’t be_ a coincidence, could it? She’d always said it was a miracle Blue had only been discovered once in the last ten thousand years—and yet this seemed like more than happenstance.)

But she also knew that the academy was a top tier school. Whatever secrets its administrators held, the cadets there received a fine education. Astronomy, navigation, engineering, flight classes, self-defense… Hell, the place had a shooting range, and everyone had to certify before the end of basic. If Lance had access to those resources—if he had a solid foundation by the time he turned eighteen and learned the truth about Altea, about Zarkon and the war he’d started, about the fight they were probably about to plunge into...

Meri had checked Blue’s scanners again just after the land deal, when she’d gone to make sure no one had discovered the exact cavern where Blue slept. More distress beacons had joined the sea of red lapping at the edges of Blue’s range. More than just the edges, now. The war was still too far away for the Earth to be in danger; there were too many worlds in between that, at least in Meri’s time, had been home to technologically and militarily advanced peoples.

But advanced scouts, come to see whether Earth was a prize worth taking? That she could believe.

War was coming, and it was looking like Meri wouldn’t have as much time to train Lance as she’d hoped. Maybe the best thing was for him to go to the Garrison. It wasn’t like he’d be there alone; Meri could run interference if Iverson ever tried something.

But there was still a part of her—the part that still thought of Lance as a six-year-old boy listening wide-eyed and awestruck to Meri’s tales of Altea--that wanted to protect him. She’d sworn she wouldn’t involve him in this fight until he came of age. If she sent him to the academy, even if she merely encouraged him, how would she live with herself? Just because she wasn’t putting the gun in his hands didn’t absolve her of responsibility.

She turned and found Lance looking at her with a mixture of hope and insecurity in his eyes, and she realized something. This wasn’t about the war. It wasn’t about fighting, or preparation, or all of the plans Meri held in reserve.

This was about Lance, daring to dream and needing someone to tell him he wasn’t being unrealistic.

Switching off the stove, Meri drained the pasta, then turned and crossed her arms. “What’s on these exams, and when are they?”

“In the spring,” Lance said, “and I don’t know. Math and physics and stuff? And a physical. I think the guy said something about an essay.”

Meri nodded. “So that’s the first step. Find out what they’re looking for, then study that.”

Lance perked up a little at her matter-of-fact tone. “Yeah? You think I’ve got a shot?”

“I think you should talk to your parents before you decide you’re going to apply,” Meri said, grabbing the butter and milk from the fridge. She flashed him a smile. “But yes, absolutely. If you want this, and if you’re willing to work for it, I know you can get in. And I’ll do whatever I can to help you.” She tapped her spoon against the edge of the pot to knock loose the excess cheese mix, set the pot aside, then crossed the kitchen and laid both her hands on Lance’s shoulders. “Your destiny lies among the stars, Lance. I know it’s scary, but if you want this, you have to take it.”

Lance’s eyes lit up at that, his spine straightening before a sudden blush overtook him and he laughed self-consciously. “My destiny? I dunno if I’d take it _that_ far.”

“I would,” Meri said. She ruffled his hair, earning an enraged squawk. “Besides! I’m some weird combination of second mother and annoying older sister. It’s my job to be embarrassingly over-supportive.” She opened the door to the basement and flipped the light switch a few times to let Luz and Mateo know dinner was ready. “But I meant what I said. You can do so much more than you give yourself credit for, Lance. Don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise.”

* * *

Lance received his acceptance letter eight months later, and Meri didn’t know whether to be thrilled or terrified. Though, to be fair, Lance didn’t seem to know either. He was shaking when he showed her, grinning so wide he had to be straining something and blinking back tears that kept leaking out anyway.

He was so _young_.

She hadn’t thought about it in years, but this acceptance letter changed things. This put him so much closer to war, and to the difficult conversation they were going to have to have in just over two years. (Two years! By the _ancients._ )

Iverson had already started handing out assignments to Naomi Smith, a cargo pilot with an impressive record from a smaller Garrison base. Meri had, actually, gotten her pilot’s license, though not from the Garrison. It had mostly been a matter of learning Earth crafts’ control layouts and refreshing her memory on things she hadn’t had to do manually since… well, _ever._ Every ship she’d ever flown had handled nearly everything automatically, and the worst she’d ever had to do was learn how to use the ship’s computer to troubleshoot.

Sarah Wimbledon accepted a job in New York City and moved away, saving Meri the trouble of trying to keep up three separate identities when Naomi demanded so much of her time. She didn’t have to stay on the base at all times, but she did spend most nights there, when she wasn’t out on assignment or doing something with Rosario. She kept having to come up with excuses—a trip to see relatives, a training camp for work, a six-week stint in California she just couldn’t pass up.

They grew apart, Meri and Rosario. Meri was surprised at how much it hurt. For a while, she’d had dinner with Rosa and the family at least three times a week, stopped by to babysit or just for a girl’s day on top of that. So to suddenly have to go weeks on end without seeing any of them?

Meri hadn’t missed the solitude of her first ten thousand years on Earth.

A year passed, and Meri took whatever chances she got to catch up with Rosario or to check in on Lance—always under the guise of Naomi Smith, a pilot with a passing interest in the next generation.

She was at the Garrison the day they announced the failure of the Kerberos mission. Three men, dead at the far reaches of the solar system, and it must have been pilot error, wasn’t that right? It wasn't mechanical failure, so what other explanation could there be? Shock and grief hung over the building like gray skies and a steady drizzle, but a different storm was building inside Meri.

_Zarkon._

It was impossible. Illogical. She had no reason whatsoever to believe that the truth was anything other than what Mitch Iverson had said. It was probably just her old trauma speaking; she may have come to terms with the death of her people, but she hadn’t dealt with Zarkon’s betrayal so much as set it aside until it became relevant again.

And right now, every bone in her body was screaming relevance.

She took a drive that day, partly to get away from Iverson’s hollow consolations and PR fervor, partly to go see Blue. Meri had only made it out here twice in the last year, but Blue didn’t mind. She’d put herself into a kind of hibernation cycle, much as she had for the ten thousand years she’d been searching. Ancient, nigh-immortal machines were good at waiting, even if they did complain that Lance was taking too long to become an adult.

“Any sign of Galra activity closer to Earth than the last time I checked?” Meri asked, sliding into the pilot’s seat. She spent so much time in Earth aircraft these days that Blue’s cockpit felt foreign, and she had to stare at the dashboard for a long moment before she remembered how to pull up the scanners.

 _Nothing definite,_ Blue said, the words appearing in Altean on the screens. This, too, felt alien to her, and she fought down a pitiful laugh. Eleven years on Earth, with nothing but Blue to tie her to her past—and no practice at all in the last six months… What did she expect?

Blue rumbled her concern, and Meri pasted a smile on her face. “It’s nothing,” she said, deliberately falling into Altean. She _hadn’t_ forgotten her own language, it _wasn’t_ lost to her, and she had _too many damn things_ to worry about to give into the lure of self-pity. “What do you mean _definite_?”

 _An anomaly,_ Blue responded. _At the edge of this system. Could be nothing._

“When?”

Blue provided a time code, and a quick conversion put the anomaly near Kerberos right around the loss of contact with the _Persephone_.

Meri’s hands shook as she called up more details on the anomaly. It gave off no signal that Blue could identify, but the energy readings were consistent with a large ship—much larger than the human shuttle. It _could_ have been… But why? Why _now_? If Zarkon had realized where Blue was hidden, why not come for _her_?

“I’ve got a lot of questions, gorgeous,” Meri whispered. “I think it’s about time I start getting some answers.”

* * *

The next year passed in a blur of fake names, espionage, and a steadily-burning rage. Meri didn’t find proof of Galra activity on Earth, but she found enough unexplained oddities to satisfy her own suspicions. She was sent on secretive supply runs to remote bases that had suspiciously large R&D budgets for labs that hadn’t existed before the last couple years. People were transferred without warning, civilians were reported missing on or near Garrison property around the world—but of course the Garrison denied any involvement.

It made Meri uneasy, and she itched to go to Lance and tell him about Voltron. They would _need_ Voltron, if Meri was right and the Galra were involved in the Garrison’s activities.

But he wasn’t eighteen yet, and Meri refused to compromise for the sake of her own impatience to be back in the heart of things. She took on more jobs in those last few months, asked around at the bases she visited under a new persona called Cora, tried to build a better picture of the situation.

She returned a week before Lance’s eighteenth birthday, already spinning plans in her head. She would have to introduce him to Blue as soon as possible, or she’d have a very angry lion on her hands—but she would have to make sure he wasn’t freaking out about the whole ‘my babysitter’s a shape-shifting alien’ thing first. Or… maybe they should go to Blue first? Lance would be less likely to be skeptical if he could feel the bond for himself, and even if he did freak out, a cavern in the wilderness was a good place for it. (Or was that creepy? Shit, she didn't want him to think she was some kind of serial killer.)

Maybe she should tell Rosario first. She _would_ have to tell Rosario and Ramon. At some point she would have to. She could tell them now, give them a week to get used to the revelation, so Lance didn’t come home to one giant freak-out.

Meri heaved a sigh as she dropped her bag on her bed. The Garrison visitor’s quarters weren’t much, as far as homecomings went, but the small bed and the window overlooking the Green were a promise of relative quiet while she figured out how to handle the conversations that had been twelve years in coming.

Her R-and-R was cut short the second she switched on her computer and started her usual sweep of her favorite news sites.

_Galaxy Garrison Releases Statement on Fatal Accident_

_New Information on Training Exercise that Killed Three_

_Third Holt Killed by Galaxy Garrison: Mother Speaks Out_

Meri’s breath stalled. The articles were a few days old, and the pictures beside them too small to make out clearly—but she’d watched Lance grow up. She’d seen him reflected in Blue’s thoughts, in the visions that had seeped through the remnants of their bond. She _knew_ Lance, and she knew before she opened the first article that something had gone terribly wrong.

* * *

“God _damn_ that boy,” Meri muttered. She stood in an empty chamber deep in the caverns outside Carlsbad—or what remained of the chamber. The roof had caved in, and water sloshed around her feet as she poked her head into the alcove where she’d dragged the cryopod and the rest of the junk that had been cluttering up the cockpit. It was still there, which only confirmed what Meri already knew: it hadn’t been the Galra who found this place.

It was Lance.

The stories online told very little beyond the official version of events: a training exercise late at night in the desert outside the Garrison. A crash that had killed Lance and the rest of his squad.

Rosario hadn’t known much more—though Meri hadn’t exactly pushed. She’d gone over as soon as the initial shock wore off, and though it had been six weeks since the accident, all the grief had come pouring out as soon as Meri walked through the door.

Karen Holt believed the children were still alive. But then, Karen Holt wasn’t exactly on anyone’s happy list in the Mendoza family. Carmen had spoken about her with particular venom as she explained about Val’s disappearance. They’d been working together, investigating the incident in the desert. (Of course they had. Of course Val would want to see Lance’s story told. Damn it all, if Meri had _been here,_ none of this would have happened.)

“Okay,” Meri said, sitting down on a relatively dry chunk of rock to think things over. So Lance and his friends had found their way out here for some unknown reason. The Garrison occasionally sent ships out this way to map the canyons or search for, well…

No. Now wasn’t the time to second guess herself. The Garrison had been searching for Blue. There was no other explanation.

But if they were searching for Blue, they weren’t likely to send cadets along, which meant the training exercise story was bullshit. Lance had either chased something out here, or he’d been trying to get away from something and Blue had called him to her. The second seemed more likely, especially because that sort of urgency would explain why the pair of them had left without Meri. If Blue had been worried for Lance’s safety, if she’d known it would be too late by the time Meri got back from her assignment—she’d come out here one last time before she left, promising Blue that the next time she came, Lance would be with her. Blue would have known there was still nearly two months before that happened.

So, okay. Lance had been running. From what? From the Garrison? She knew he’d had some issues with focus and discipline, but nothing this extreme. Unless he’d wandered into something Iverson wanted kept quiet. Unless he’d stumbled upon the very thing Meri had been hunting for since she joined up with the Garrison.

Galra.

On Earth.

“You don’t know that for sure,” Meri told herself. But it was hard to believe otherwise.

Well. Galra or no, Meri could at least be sure Lance was in good hands. It hurt—it hurt like a vkullor’s breath to not be there when he needed her, to not be part of this… to lose her chance to maybe, hopefully, if the universe decided to smile on her again, see Allura and Coran again.

But Lance was safe. As safe as he could be, all things considered.

Val was another matter entirely. Lance and Blue would have been long gone by the time she started poking around, and her disappearance was malicious no matter how Meri sliced it. Iverson, Zarkon, or some other power—someone had wanted Val silenced.

Meri opened her phone and swiped through pictures she’d found on Iverson’s computer—being able to impersonate the man had its uses, as it turned out. It had taken her the better part of a year to get the likeness down, but it was worth every second in the end.

Three faces stared back at her from her phone screen: Karen Holt, Eli Kahale, and Akira Shirogane. All of them had lost family to the Garrison, either on the Kerberos mission or in last month’s “training incident.” All three, according to Iverson’s notes, were likely co-conspirators of Val’s. Karen and Eli had all but admitted as such, and Akira was the only person on the Carlsbad base with a convincing motive to help them.

It had occurred to Meri that one or more of these people might actually be in league with the Galra or, at the very least, that they might not take kindly to hearing that their families had been taken by aliens. Meri would have to reveal herself to them sooner or later if she wanted them to believe her, but would they see any difference between the Galra they’d never met and the Altean who knew too much?

Would they go public with her story, exposing her to whatever Galra allies Iverson had made in the last few years? Without Blue, she was stuck here--not quite helpless, but severely limited in options. She felt trapped, and she kept seeing Altea burning around her, only this time there weren't shuttles and cruisers and private vessels to take Zarkon's would-be victims to safety.

There was just her and whatever advantage she could wring out of the fact that no one knew she was here.

She'd have to be careful. Part of her wanted to go to ground, to wait for the paladins to return to Earth. They would eventually—either someone would realize Zarkon’s armies were headed this way, or Lance and Blue would deepen their bond to the point that Blue could tell him about Meri. That would take time, of course, time she may not have, and anyway, she’d never been the sort to happily sit by while others risked their lives. She’d done enough of that in the last ten thousand years to last several lifetimes. It was time to take a risk.

It was time to have a talk with Akira Shirogane.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading, and I hope you enjoyed this self-indulgent little detour! I've started working on season 3 in earnest, and that's tentatively scheduled to start on October 2. The Paranoia fic should go up about a week in advance, so if there are any changes in my plans, I'll let you know then. :)


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